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AN APPEAL 

AND 

A D E FIAN C E. 



AN APPEAL TO THE GOOD FAITH OF A 
PROTESTANT BY BIRTH. A DEFI- 
ANCE TO THE REASON OF 
A RATIONALIST BY 
PROFESSION. 



BY 

His Eminence Cardinal Deschamps, 

Archbishop of Malines. 

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH 

BY A REDEMPTORIST FATHER. 

"L'evidence oblige^^fjftti" OF CGAftf^ 
Evidence foic^tf^^QM 

New York, Cincinnati and St. Louis: 
BENZIGER BROTHERS, 

Printers to the Holy Apostolic See. 
1883. 



APPROBATION. 

In virtue of the powers we have received 
from our Most Reverend Father General, and 
considering the favorable report made to us 
by two theologians of our Congregation, we 
allow the publication of the English transla- 
tion of the pamphlet entitled " Appel et Defi" 
by His Eminence Cardinal Deschamps. 

J. H. P. Kockerds, C.SS.R. 

Sup. Prov. Belg. 

Brussels, 15th October, 1882. 



The Library 
of Congress 

washington 



Copyright, 1883, by Benziger Brothers. 



DEDICATION 

TO 

CARDINAL DESCHAMPS. 



Your Eminence : 

It occurs to me that a translator can- 
not dedicate his labor more fittingly to any- 
one than to the author of his translation. I 
would humbly beg your Eminence, therefore, 
to accept this work, of which you yourself are 
the author, as a practical proof of the esteem 
and veneration that the translator has for 
your Eminence. 

I remain your Eminence's 

Most humble servant, 

The Translator. 



PREFACE. 

But few words of preface are needed in 
presenting to the public a translation of any 
of Cardinal Deschamps' works. It has proba- 
bly been a subject of surprise and regret to those 
who have read his works that so few, as yet, 
have been translated into English. For the 
translation itself I must claim great indulgence. 
This I trust will be granted by those who are 
aware that truly classical works are the most 
difficult to translate, and when I state that this 
translation has been made during the incessant 
labors of a laborious foreign mission. 

The Translator. 



CONTENTS. 



Page. 

An Appeal and a Defiance, ... 9 

CHAPTER I. 

An Appeal to the good faith of a Protestant 
by birth, .... 13 

CHAPTER II. 
A defiance to the reason of a Rationalist, . 35 

1. The Biblical fact of the Two Tes- 

taments from the point of view 

of reason, . . . .36 

2. The Biblical fact of the New Tes- 

tament in presence of the fact of 
the Church, considered in its 
relation to reason, . . 65 

3. Evidence induces obligation, . 84 



VIII 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER III. 

PAGE. 

Why many people do not see what is Evi- 
dent, and how what is clear for the 
Wise is also clear for the simple, , . 89 

1. Why people do not see what is 

evident, 89 

2. What is clear to the learned is clear 

to the simple, . , . .112 



AN APPEAL AND A DEFIANCE. 



AT the moment when the still recent at- 
tacks of rationalism against the divine 
foundation of religion were making the 
greatest sensation, we happened to meet with an 
English Protestant who had been much struck 
and still more grieved by a fact that forced 
itself upon his mind. On the one hand he 
remarked the absolute silence, or at least the 
weakness of the few protestations of Protestant- 
ism against the attacks of shallow science, 
while on the other hand he heard the chorus 
of voices which rose from the Catholic Church, 
to confess with love and to defend with might, 
the divinity of the Son of Man, the truth of 
the Incarnation of the Son of God, this es- 
sential truth of which he has said himself: 
" Whoever shall fall on this stone shall be 
broken." — (Matt. xxi. 44.) We saw at once that 
we were in the presence of a traditional Pro- 
testant, of a Christian attached to his Church 
in virtue of a Catholic principle ill applied, 
and we showed him how it was, that Protestant- 
ism, if it be faithful to its own principles, 
found itself necessarily disarmed in the com- 
bat with rationalism. 



IO AN APPEAL AND A DEFIANCE. 

But we endeavored especially to make him 
understand why the fragments of the Christian 
weapons which Protestants still possess by 
means of the Holy Scripture could not have 
the strength that these divine weapons possess, 
in the hands of the Church, to give combat 
to the enemies of the faith, and carry off the 
victory. Our travelling companion seemed 
rather pleased than annoyed at this conversa- 
tion, which lasted until the different directions 
of our journey forced us to separate. He was 
on his way to Calais, and we were going to 
Tournai to prepare a new edition of the 
pamphlets, which certain circumstances have 
caused us to publish during the past few 
years. 

It is from this meeting that the thought 
came to us to add to one of these pamphlets 
another chapter, in which we give the con- 
versation just mentioned. 

But as this last pamphlet had originally 
been written to unmask the freemasons who 
were seeking in the Evangelical alliance, re- 
cruits to combat the Christian doctrine, we 
hardly fancy that any one would expect to 
find in the last Edition of " Masques Bib- 
liques" what was wanting to all the preceding 
editions, viz., the appeal we made to Protest- 
ants who are still in good faith, and the defiance 
we launched against rationalists by means of 
some detached extracts from larger contro- 
versial works. 

We believe, therefore, that this last part, 



AN APPEAL AND A DEFIANCE. II 



which was quite supplementary to our former 
work, will make its way better by itself, reach 
its destination more surely, and be attended 
with more success, now that it is developed 
and published under the title it bears at pres- 
ent, which more clearly points out its aim. 
This aim is at one and the same time to bring 
back our straying brethren to the full Chris- 
tian or Catholic truth, to show the numerous 
disciples of rationalism that reason itself con- 
demns them, and to preserve many a poor 
soul from the poisoned arrows which the 
Protestant Propaganda, aided in every way by 
Freemasonry, aims at them by means of the 
so-called liberalism of to-day and by all that 
no longer believe in Jesus Christ. 

Moreover papers, reviews, and pamphlets, 
are making such a determined war on books 
properly so called, that these last, in order to 
have a chance of being read, are presented to 
their readers in portions suited to the appetite. 
Do not our best writers and even those who 
tickle the public curiosity the most, by treat- 
ing of the history of our times, give us their 
works bit by bit. It is fitting, therefore, that 
more serious works, and those which have a 
much deeper interest for souls, should give 
them the bread of truth in the same way. 

This is what Abbe Gratry did when he 
separated from his "Sophists" the chapter 
against M. Renan,to form the pamphlet which 
is so widely spread. Why should we not 
do the same, since before the publication of 



12 AN APPEAL AND A DEFIANCE. 



the last work of M. Renan we had already 
shown in the "Christ et les Antichrists" by 
facts which can not be called in question, that 
all that he had said of Christianity and the 
Gospels is evidently without foundation? Why 
should we not in like manner say to Protes- 
tants, if* not everything that can be said to 
prove the falseness of Protestantism, at least 
a few decisive words that will make their error 
stare them in the face. 

Truth is like a diamond. You can break it 
in pieces, but each fragment keeps its natural 
brightness, and proves it is genuine by its 
lustre. The true religion, from whatever side 
you look at it, is always recognizable. Its 
splendor is not dead but living, and its divine 
life always pierces through the weakness of 
those who serve as the organ to her voice, 
and as instruments of action. 



CHAPTER I. 



An Appeal to the Good Faith cf a Protestant by 
Birth. 



OU are a Protestant because you have 



X been born a Protestant. You belong to 
the Anglican Church or to the Presbyterian 
Church, to the high or low Church, you are a 
Calvanist, a Lutheran, a Methodist, or an 
Anti-baptist, or a member of any other sect, 
because your parents have been Anglicans, 
Presbyterians, Lutherans, Calvanists, or have 
belonged to some other sect. Naturally 
speaking this must have been so, and if you 
say that I have become a Catholic in the same 
way, I willingly agree with you, with this dis- 
tinction, that in becoming what you are, as 
those become what I am, you have become a 
Protestant in virtue of the Catholic principle, 
and in spite of the Protestant one. The 
Catholic principle, as also the principle of 
reason and common sense, is that religion by 
its very nature is not and cannot be an open 
question. It is not any kind of science, but 
the science of life itself, the science of the aim 
and end of man, the science of the road one 
must follow in this world not to lose one's 
time and trouble. This is the reason why 




14 



AN APPEAL TO A PROTESTANT. 



religion cannot be a mere question, a diffi- 
culty or a problem to be solved, a matter of 
opinion and controversy without a judge, be- 
cause man has too short a time to pass on 
earth to search what he must do with life, and 
God, morally speaking, could not have placed 
him on the path of time without giving him the 
reason, or without enlightening him on his 
end. Providence may well abandon the world 
to the disputes of men, and to the progress of 
science, because physical nature — the earth 
and the heaven, — necessarily continue their 
course without suffering from our ignorance. 
But God could not have left man in doubt 
about the course he is to follow, and in 
ignorance of the law he is to obey, because 
man acts freely and with intelligence, and 
without light from on high would fall into the 
abyss. "The word of God on high is the 
fountain of wisdom." — (Ecclus. i. 5.) "And thy 
word is a lamp to my feet" — (Ps. cxviii. 105.) 

Thus in all ages and among all nations, 
religion has been transmitted as life has 
been, and as a gift of the author of life. 
Is it not altogether fitting that the parents 
who give life, should teach their children why 
this life has been given them ? Have not the 
parents themselves had to learn this themselves 
from their fathers? It is thus that in going 
back from generation to generation, the first 
family which came from the hands of God 
must needs have been taught by God, by Him 
from whom all paternity descends. It is evi- 



AN APPEAL TO A PROTESTANT. 



15 



dent that in such matters parents do not in- 
vent but only receive, for they themselves are 
children with regard to God, before whom all 
families are as one. This is why domestic 
society is dependent here on religious society, 
in which the divinely established authority 
is invested with the character of spiritual pa- 
ternity. 

It is the character, therefore, of the true 
faith, to be transmitted as life is from the 
origin of the human race. This forms the 
living unity of religion through all ages. 

You have been made believe, perhaps, that 
you are an Anglican, a Methodist, a Lutheran, 
a Calvanist, or anything else, because you have 
found in the Bible the opinions of the sect 
in which you were born. This is a mis- 
take; you are what the teaching of your 
parents and of your Church have made you, 
in spite of the Protestant principle which 
Inukiplies among you so many Churches, doc- 
trines and negatives. I say in spite of the 
Protestant principles, for you know that Protes- 
tantism owes its birth to the negation of the 
authority of the teaching Church, and to 
the corresponding affirmation of the all suffi- 
ciency of the Bible as the means of preserving 
and propagating the Christian religion. " The 
Bible'' it cries, u The Bible alone, and the 
Bible without explanation." But this has not 
prevented, and does not prevent, it from still 
flooding every day, the East and West with a 
deluge of little tracts and pamphlets, of all; 



l6 AN APPEAL TO A PROTESTANT. 

kinds, in order no doubt the better to prove 
that the Bible can be understood by itself and 
has no need of explanation. But it is not 
only necessary for it to deny in this way the 
affirmation of its origin, it has also especially 
to deny the fundamental negation which gave 
it birth, and after having been born of this 
negation of the perpetual mission of the ever 
teaching Church established by Jesus Christ, 
it resumes again, to its own profit, the Cath- 
olic principle, and lives only on condition of 
teaching, and even of reducing almost all its 
worship to preaching. Hence, in spite of the 
principle which causes opinions and sects to 
abound in Protestantism, you are, like all 
orthodox Protestants, what the teaching of 
your parents and your Church have made you. 
But you will say it is enough to belong to the 
creed of one's fathers, to be in the right. If 
this were the case the idolaters would not be 
wrong. 

I grant you it is not enough for error to be 
traditional in order to enjoy the privileges of 
truth. Hence we must believe that in bestow- 
ing upon us our reason, God has given us suf- 
ficient light to discern the work of God from the 
work of man. It is by our reason that we are 
the living images of God, and when God comes 
to us, our reason easily recognizes its princi- 
ple and its father. We do not therefore cling 
to God blindly. It is not enough that error 
should be proposed to us like truth in order to 
have the same right as truth, for there have 



AN APPEAL TO A PROTESTANT. 1 7 

always been wicked men who have broken the 
divine chain of the true religion, to transmit to 
their descendants a few broken, rusty and 
scattered links thereof. But on this account 
is it less certain that it is of the nature of reli- 
gious truth to be transmitted as life is ? Is it 
not rather evident that if the evil men of whom 
we spoke had not more than once troubled 
the stream it would ever have been sufficient 
to be of the religion of one's parents to be in 
the right ? Thus the words <4 Religioji of our 
fathers'' are so powerful and are never without 
an echo in our souls. Those words really 
mean "The religion of God." He who really 
understands the purport of these words will 
always come to the knowledge of the truth. 

No doubt God makes himself known in 
other ways than by the mark of the living 
unity of his words in all ages, and when Jesus 
Christ came to repair the divine chain of 
truth broken by the sacrilegious abuse of that 
power which is called <; the liberty of man /" He 
manifested the Divinity of His Mission by 
many other signs, but not the less by the one I 
have mentioned. He has proved Himself to 
be God by showing Himself the sole King of 
Ages. He said on His entry into the world: 
" I11 the head of the book it is written of me." — 
(Heb. x. 7.) He said also: " The law and the 
prophets are full of me." — (Luke xxiv. 44.) 
And lastly, " / am not come to destroy but 
to fulfil." — (Matt. v. 17.) He made two 
witnesses, of which God alone disposes, 



l8 AN APPEAL TO A PROTESTANT. 

the past and the future, to render testimony 
to His Divinity. To those who listened to 
His word, He showed Himself the true master 
of the past, since He made them read His his- 
tory divinely, written by the forty centuries 
that preceded His coming. To us who read 
the Gospels He has shown Himself the tiue 
Master of the future, since He has left us 
the prophetic announcement replete with 
wonderful details, and also an evidentl)* 
divine promise of the future which seemed 
scarcely credible, realized under our eyes by 
the constitution, the marks, the faith, the 
worship, the action, and the duration of the 
Universal Church. Here is the Master of 
ages to whom alone glory belongs. " J?egi 
seeculorum immortalitati, soli Deo, honor et 
gloria." " To the King of ages, immortal, 
the only God, be honor and glory." — (I. Tim. i. 
17.) Here in very truth is the living unity of 
the primitive word coming back to man ac- 
cording to the Divine promise to be trans- 
mitted to the end of time by a perpetual 
apostolate. " Docete usque ad eo?isummatio?iem 
sceculi." u Teach even to the consummation 
of the world." — (Matt, xxviii. 20.) Listen 
to me now as children of God. Is it not 
evident that we must understand the Gospels, 
the Acts and Epistles of the Apostles, as the 
Evangelists and the Apostles themselves un- 
derstood them? Were not the bishops w 7 ho 
were placed by them over the primitive 
*I say evidently, this I will prove later on. 



AN APPEAL TO A PROTESTANT. 



19 



Churches commanded to keep intact the 
deposit of the faith, such as had been confided 
to them orally and by writing. — (Thess. ii. 14.) 
The living unity of the faith throughout ages 
is therefore here again the mark of divine 
truth, and it is evident that the only true way 
of understanding the Holy Scriptures is the 
way in which they were first understood. 
Hence it is absurd to open the Bible as many 
do, to discover its meaning; he alone has true 
Christian sense who seeks in the Sacred Scrip- 
tures only for the Divine aliment of the faith, 
which is ever ancient and ever new. 

Follow out the Catholic principle therefore 
to its last conclusions, and return to unity. 
Then the Gospels, which hitherto have been 
a book half closed to you, will henceforth be 
opened and full of light. 

You have read these words of Christ: "Go, 
teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of 
the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, 
and behold / am with you all days even to the 
consummation of the world." — (Matt, xxviii. 19, 
20.) In these words we have clearly a universal 
teaching authority, teach all nations; a per- 
petual teaching authority, teach until the con- 
summation of the world. There is therefore 
manifestly an authority which has the divine 
assistance to preserve the divine teaching, 
and therefore an authority divinely faithful, 
or in other words, an infallible depository, 
of this teaching. "I am with you all days, 
even unto the end" You must therefore show 



20 



AN APPEAL TO A PROTESTANT. 



me on earth a religious authority resting on the 
divine institution and assistance, affirming 
itself for this very reason infallible in the co- 
main of the faith, and speaking to all the 
people as well as to all the centuries since 
Jesus Christ, or else you must tear up the 
Bible and cast the leaves to the wind. But 
up to this where have you come across this 
authority which teaches, which is universal and 
perpetual, resting on the promise of infallible 
assistance made to it by Jesus Christ? Make 
the avowal therefore that hitherto these divine 
words have been to you but mere vain words, 
and that they will only cease to be such, when 
you read them in the presence of the living fact 
of Catholicity. For the Church is the work of 
God, as well as the Holy Scriptures, and you 
must not separate the two works which have 
been united by the Almighty, if you have not 
misunderstood both the one and the other. 

You have often read the following words in 
the Gospel: " Thou art Peter, ci7id ufon this 
rock I will build my Church, a?id the gates oj 
hell shall not prevail against it. J will give to 
thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven.'* — (Matt, 
xvi. 18, 19.) 

The kingdom of heaven, as you know, is 
the spiritual empire, the fifth empire which 
Daniel foretold is not to be destroyed. It 
is to Peter that Christ has given the keys of 
this kingdom, and you are aware to whom the 
keys of a city are given. But this power on 
which Christ rests this Church, this corner- 



AN APPEAL TO A PROTESTANT. 21 

stone of His divine edifice, where have you 
found it? Since Jesus Christ, where reigns 
this supreme authority, which no power has 
been or ever will be able to destroy? Raise 
your eyes and look at Rome, see there Peter 
always reigning in his successors, and at last 
understand that the solemn promise of the 
Gospel is not in vain. 

Doubtless you have been struck at the scene 
in which the Gospel shows us Jesus Christ 
when He appeared to His Apostles after His 
resurrection; showed them those divine sources 
of pardon, His wounds: breathed upon them 
the spirit of mercy in His divine breath and 
addressed to them these solemn words: 
"Receive ye the Holy Ghost \ whose sins you 
shall forgive they are forgiven them, and whose 
sins you shall retain they are retained" — (John 
xx. 22, 23.) But have you been able to under- 
stand these wondrous words? God alone has 
power to forgive sins: this power He has com- 
municated to the apostolate, to the authority 
which He has given to His Church: but where 
have you found the traces of this most wonder- 
ful power? Look, oh! Christian, and see it full 
of life in the Catholic Church, within which 
pardon descends by the hands of the priest 
on all the consciences ready to receive 
it, on all those souls who humble them- 
selves and confess themselves guilty. Con- 
fession, such as it exists in the Church, such 
as it is practiced by the wise and the ig- 
norant, by the Pope as well as by the low- 



22 



AN APPEAL TO A PROTESTANT. 



liest of the faithful, by kings as by peo- 
ple, is a fact which is so superhuman that 
divine institution can alone account for it. 
But on the other hand, how can you explain 
the words of the Gospel which I have just 
quoted? Once again, therefore, the Gospel 
announces the Church and the Church explains 
the Gospel. You must not separate these 
two gifts of God from each other unless you 
wish to lose both. 

Finally you have read, both in the Old and 
in the New Testament, in the Psalms, in the 
Prophets, in the Gospels, and in the Epistles, 
the following words, whose mysterious con- 
nection must have struck you: 

**/ have no pleasure in you" said the 
Lord to the people of old, " /;/// behold from the 
rising of the sun even to the going down, my 
name is great anion* the Gentiles, and there is 
offered to my name a clean offering. — (Malac. i. 10, 
ii.) The royal prophet, speaking of Christ the 
high priest of the new covenant, cries out: 
" The Lord said to my Lord, thou art a priest 
for ever according to the order of MelchisedecJi y 
(Ps. cix.), namely of the pontiff who blessed 
Abraham, the father of the true believers, 
and who offered to God bread and wine because he 
was the priest of the Most High. — (Gen. xiv. 
18.) 

" I am the living bread which came down 
from heaveti" says Jesus Christ himself, speak- 
ing of the participation in the sacrifice of the 
New Law; " he who eats this bread shall live 



AN APPEAL TO A PROTESTANT. 



23 



forever; and the bread which 1 shall give is 
my flesh, for the life of the world" And as 
the Jews murmured on hearing these words, 
Jesus Christ continued, "Amen, amen, I say 
unto you, except you eat the flesh of the Son of 
Man, and drink his blood, you shall not have 
life in you. He that eateth my flesh and drink- 
eth my blood, hath everlasting life; and I will 
raise him up in the last day. For my flesh is 
m eat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He 
that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood abid- 
eth in me and I in him." — (St. John vi.) 

On the eve of his death, after having cele- 
brated with his disciples the supper of the 
ancient alliance, which was such a wondrous 
figure of the New, he dispelled the figurative 
shades of the past by the institution of the 
great reality which was to remain in all future 
ages. 

"And taking bread, he %ave thanks and brake; 
and gave to them saying: This is my body which 
is given for you. Do this for a commemoration 
of me. In like manner the chalice also, after 
he had supped^ saying: This is the chalice, the 
new testament in my blood, which shall be shed 
for you." — (St. Luke xxii.) 

"For I have received of the Lord," says the 
great Apostle to the first Christians, " that which 
also J delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus, 
the same night in which he was betrayed, took 
bread, and giving thanks, broke and said: Take 
ye and eat; this is my body, which shall be de- 
livered for you; do this for the commemoration 



24 



AN APPEAL TO A PROTESTANT. 



of me. In like manner also the chalice \ after he 
had supped, saving: This chalice is the new 
testament in my blood; this do ye, as often as 
you shall drink for the commemoration of me. 
For as often as you shall eat this bread and drink 
the chalice, you shall show the death of the 
Lord, until he come. Therefore whosoever shall 
eat this bread or drink the chalice of the Lord 
unworthily, shall be guilty of the body 

AND OF THE BLOOD OF THE LORD. But let 

a man prove himself, and so let him eat of that 
bread and drink of the chalice. Tor he that 
eaieth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and 

DRINKETH JUDGMENT TO HIMSELF,NOT DISCER- 
NING THE BODY OF THE LORD." (I. Cor. XI.) 

Elsewhere comparing this spotless victim 
with the victims which were offered to idols in 
the pagan sacrifices, St. Paul says to the Chris- 
tians: " You cannot be partakers of the table of 
the Lord and of the table of devils " — (I. Cor. x.) 
Then referring to the shadows of the Mosiac 
sacrifices, he adds, " We have an altar whereof 

THEY HAVE NO POWER TO EAT who Serve the 

tabernacle." — (Heb. xiii.) "The bread which we 
break, is it not the partaking of the body of the 
Lord, and the chalice which we bless, is it not the 
communion of the blood of Christ f 9t — (I. Cor. x.) 

Now have you never been struck with the 
agreement of these words of the two Testa- 
ments ? You must acknowledge that they are 
full of mystery, and that of yourself you can 
get but little light from them. Where is the 
sacrifice which is to be offered forever accord- 



AN APPEAL TO A PROTESTANT. 25 



ing to the order of Melchisedech ? Where is 
the victim without blemish that is offered in 
all places from the East to the West, among 
all nations? Open your eyes and look at the 
Catholic Church; there you will see the pure 
and bloodless victim who gives life to the 
world, the true living bread descended from 
heaven — (St. John vi.), offered always and every- 
where by the hands of a new priesthood in 
memory of the bloody sacrifice once consum- 
mated on the cross. — (Heb. vii.) 

Consider seriously and tell me if this fact is 
human; on the one side to see but the species 
of bread and wine, and on the other nations 
prostrate in adoration. How can you explain 
this way of acting without the help of the true 
word and the power of God ? The Eucharistic 
worship is the worship of civilized nations. It 
has been and still is an object of intense 
veneration to the greatest minds of all ages 
from Origen to Leibnitz, from Clement ot 
Alexandria to Descartes, from Augustine to 
Pascal, from Chrysostom to Bossuet. It is a 
source of consolation and life to the learned 
as well as to the simple; it is, as it were, the 
heart of Christianity, which is the soul of the 
world. Now this profound mystery is an actual, 
perpetual and universal fact! Once again I 
ask you, how can you explain this without the 
power of God ?* It is this mystery only, as you 



* We propose these questions to rationalists as well 
as to Protestants. 



26 



AN APPEAL TO A PROTESTANT. 



have seen, that can explain the Holy Scriptures, 
yet how should we know of this mystery were 
it not for the divine institution which the 
Holy Scriptures relate to us. Here then again, 
as elsewhere, the Church explains the Scrip- 
tures, the Scriptures the Church; and from 
the union of these two gifts of God, light 
is poured forth abundantly from on high. 
Separate these two gifts and everything is 
again enveloped in darkness. 

Cease then to separate them, and the union 
of the living with the written word will give 
you in all its fulness that truth of which Protes- 
tantism has given you a few shreds. Consider 
how it has rent the truth asunder. 

Faith saves us but by means of the charity 
which it inspires. Protestantism, through the 
unmistakable voice of its patriarchs, separates 
faith from charity and declares that faith, with- 
out good works, is sufficient to make us par- 
take in the fruits of Redemption. 

Hope rests, by means of prayer, on the 
merits of Jesus Christ, but Jesus Christ Him- 
self wills that we should go to Him in com- 
pany with our brethren in heaven and on 
earth, with the men and angels who have 
already won their crown, and above all in com- 
pany with that great model of hope and prayer, 
with Mary of whom Jesus was born. (St. Matt, i: 
16.) This living union, this Comnnim'on of Saints 
(Apostles' Creed) which the Apostles preached 
to the whole world, which has been believed 
and practiced in all ages, which is graven on the 



AN APPEAL TO A PROTESTANT. 2'/ 

stones of the catacombs and on all the monu- 
ments of the Apostolic churches, this it is that 
Protestantism rejects; and pretends that the 
Church Militant cannot speak to the Church 
Triumphant, nor make its groanings heard in 
heaven, as if any distance were too great for 
the voice of the heart, or of tears, and as if 
silence itself did not speak to spirits. 

In Protestantism divine love is separated 
from worship, which is but the divine expres- 
sion of this love; especially in the Eucharist, 
which is the heart of Christianity, grace is 
separated from its great reservoirs, the Sacra- 
ments; the one great sacrifice of Redemption, 
is separated from its perpetual oblation on 
the altars of the New Covenant; the univer- 
sal society established by Jesus Christ is 
separated from the authority which Christ 
Himself placed as its foundation; the written 
word is separated from the living tradition 
which shows its origin and its meaning, and 
this very Scripture is divided, the texts are 
divided, the context, the unity, that is to say, 
the truth, is hidden, as was done by him who 
combatted Christ with the Bible in the temp- 
tation in the desert. 

Leave, therefore, this work of the spirit of 
division, return to the work of the spirit of 
love and union, yield to the evidence of this 
divine work, veni et vide, Come and see, (St. John 
i. 46) and an experience sweeter far than evi- 
dence will teach you more fully where are to 
be found in their plenitude " the truth and 
the life. 99 — (St. John xiv. 6.) 



28 



AN APPEAL TO A PROTESTANT. 



Then will you be delivered of the burden 
with which your conscience cannot but be op- 
pressed, when you see Protestantism become 
through its own principles a weapon in the 
hands of rationalism to ccmbat the Christian 
faith and the divinity of Jesus Christ. 

Then also will you experience a heartfelt 
satisfaction and a holy pride in belonging to 
that Church which alone enjoys the privilege 
of being feared and hated by the enemies of 
the faith, by rationalists and by antichristian 
societies. 

Then, in fine, will you find in the Catholic 
faith a shield which is proof against the darts of 
incredulity, and a divine weapon — (Ephes.vi. 1 1- 
i3),which will give scepticism its death-blow. It 
is easy for you to substantiate what I now affirm, 
by what is taking place at this very hour, for 
you have certainly heard something of the favor 
with which the press has received the sacrile- 
gious romance published by M. Renan under 
the title of Life of Christ. Well now, the 
dreams which this writer gives as history are 
dissipated like the morning mist before the 
sun, by the fact of the Catholic Church. 
What I proved just now, when I showed you 
Jesus Christ disposing of the future as the 
true King of ages, will have made you under- 
stand already uhat I mean. Before, however, 
bringing you in presence of this great fact 
which Protestantism has hidden from your 
eyes, a living fact which follows up criticism to 
its last strongholds, I wish first to grant you 
what is due to ycu. 



AN APPEAL TO A PROTESTANT. 29 

I own, therefore, that it is only necessary for 
a person to know how to read, whether he be 
a Catholic or not, in order to find in the 
Gospels the proof of the gross ignorance or 
signal bad faith of M. Renan, when he affirms 
for example that " it is only in the Gopel of 
St. John that Jesus makes use of the expres- 
sion of Son of God, or of Son, in speaking of 
Himself. Certainly you could say, as I could 
to M. Renan: But do the following words 
occur in the Gospel of St John: "And the 
high-priest rising up said to him: Answer est 
thou nothing to the things which these witness 
against thee ? But Jesus held his peace. And 
the high-priest said to him: I adjure thee by the 
living God, that thou tell us if thou be the Christ 
the son of god. Jesus saith to him: Thou 
hast said it. Nevertheless, I say to you 9 
hereafter you shall see the Son of Man sitting 
on the right hand of the power of God, and 
coming in the clouds of heaven. Then the 
high-priest rent his garments, saying : He 
hath blasphemed: what further need have 
we of witnesses ? Behold now you have heard the 
blasphemy; what think you ? But they answering \ 
said: He is guilty of death." — (St. Matt. xxiv. 
62-66). It is not only therefore in the Gospel 
of St. John that we read: "He ought to die 
because he made himself the Son of God. ,% — 
(John xix. 7.) No; both St. Luke and St. Mark 
are just as explicit as St. Matthew: "They 
brought him into their council, saying; If thou be 
the Christ tell us. And he saith to them: If I 



AN APPEAL TO A PROTESTANT. 



shall tell you, you will not believe me. And if 
1 shall also ask you, you will not answer nie y 
nor let me go. But hereafter the Son of Man 
shall be sitting on the right hand of the power of 
God. Then said they all: Art thou then the Sou 
of God? Who said: You say thai I a in." — 
(St. Luke xxii. 66-70.) Elsewhere we rend: 
"Again the high-priest ashed Aim, and said to 
him: Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed 
God? And Jesus saith to him: J am; and 
you shall see the Son of Man sitting on 
the right hand of the power of God, and coming 
witJi the clouds of heaven. Then the high priest 
rending his garments saith: What need we any 
f urther witnesses ? You have heard the blas- 
phemy. J I 'hat think you? J I ho all con- 
demned him to be guilty of death." — (Mark xiv. 
61-64.) 

He was in very deed, because he willed to be 
so. " Oblatus est quia ipse volunt" — (Is. liii. 7.) 
He was offered because he willed it. The Son of 
God having become Son of Man in his incarna- 
tion to pay the penalty for guilty mankind, it is 
true therefore that he died because He was 
the Son of God. The great sacrifice of rep- 
aration to which the bloody types of all re- 
ligions, since the beginning of the world, tes- 
tify, could not be worthily offered to the Di- 
vine Justice save by a divine person. But we 
must draw off our attention from these great 
thoughts to consider the follies advanced by 
M. Renan. I grant you, therefore, that with- 
out being a Catholic you can convict him 



AN APPEAL TO A PROTESTANT. 



3* 



either of ignorance or of bad faith, on placing 
under his eyes the following words of Christ 
in St. Matthew: " All things are delivered 
to me by my Father. And no one knoweth the 
Son but the Father, neither doth anyone know 
the Father but the Son, and he to whom it shall 
please the Son to reveal him/* (St. Matt. xi. 27.) 
as also the following words in which the 
beginning and end of redemption are declared 
by Christ: Go therefore, teach all nations , 
baptising them in the ?iame of the Father, and of 
the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" — (St. Matt, 
xxviii. 19.) 

I acknowledge that without being a 
Catholic you have a right, as I myself have, to 
appreciate at their just value other dreams 
borrowed by M. Renan from Germany, who 
is abandoning them; for instance, the miracles 
he imagines to explain the facts which he ad- 
mits; the existence of the Gospels in the form 
in which we now have them from the very 
beginning of the Christian era. According 
to Renan, St. Matthew collected the sentences 
of Christ; St. Mark the facts and the an- 
ecdotes, according to what St. Peter had told 
him. These books were exchanged among 
the Christians. " The poor man having but 
one book, put down in it all that he liked, 
and thus each finished his own copy as best 
pleased him. It is in this manner that the 
Gospels of St. Mark and St. Matthew ap- 
peared one day in all the Churches of the East 
and the West, each Church possessing exactly 



32 AN APPEAL TO A PROTESTANT. 

the same text. Thus therefore is it that these 
inimitable books, whose author Rousseau him- 
self declared, in a moment of sincerity, must 
have been more than a hero, thus, I say, is it 
that these pages, so incomparable in grandeur, 
simplicity, elevation, fecundity and in har- 
monious unity, came forth ' from an obscure 
and entirely popular source'; and merely by 
chance." Certainly common sense alone suf- 
fices to see here two miracles of the first order, 
and to affirm without fear of contradiction that 
in this account the wonderful is only surpassed 
by the absurd. Vou have therefore the right, as 
a reasonable man. without even being a Catho- 
lic, to address M. Renan in the following words 
of an eminent professor of Sorbonne: " To 
understand fully the weakness of such roman- 
tic theories, it is sufficient to apply them to 
another subject. You believe that Caesar is 
the author of the Commentaries that bear his 
name. But you are mistaken. Caesar only 
left a few notes on the wars in Gaul. These 
notes were circulated among his lieutenants 
and other companions in arms. Each one 
added to the notes what he himself remem- 
bered, making no scruple to make additions, 
to combine facts differently, and to fill up the 
primitive texts with all kinds of rumors. In 
short each one put in his copy what best 
pleased him. This work lasted for twenty 
years. Then by the greatest chance it was 
found that all these agents of an obscure and 
purely popular elaboration, had hit upon ex- 



AN APPEAL TO A PROTESTANT. 



33 



actly the same text, which the literary world 
had foolishly attributed to Caesar. If I 
dared to insult my readers by proposing to 
them such an hypothesis, I know not what 
they would answer. But should they only treat 
me as a dreamer I should think myself lucky 
to have escaped general derision at so cheap 
a rate." — (Abbe Treppel.) 

This is what you have the same right to an- 
swer as ourselves to Renan, and to all the 
German biblicists turned Frenchmen. But, 
after having torn away the veil which hid 
from your eyes the full view of the Church, 
you will not have the intellectual satisfaction 
of seeing yourselves, and of showing others, 
the invincible argument which is furnished by 
the very existence of this Church as it stands 
before you in relation to the New Testament 
to prove to rationalists the divine character of 
both the one and the other. I intend there- 
fore to show you now from the point of view 
of reason what I have just shown you from 
the point of view of a believer in the Holy 
Scriptures. It is to do this the better, 
that I take leave of you for the present in 
order to address myself directly to rationalists. 
I shall on this account be obliged to enlarge 
my subject and not treat of the fact which 
I have just promised you till I have 
proved another truth which you already ad- 
mit, but which rationalism pretends not to see. 
Moreover, as both these facts can finally be 
resolved into one, looked at under different 



34 AN APPEAL TO A PROTESTANT. 



aspects, the remembrance of what you know 
already will assist you much in enjoying the 
view of what has hitherto been hidden from 
you. Listen then, and you will understand 
that it is of no use for M. Renan, for his dis- 
ciples and their masters, to take flight on the 
wings of a superficial criticism to the olden 
times or distant epochs whence they come 
back at their ease, when the truth from which 
they wish to fly pursues them without pity, as 
a fact ever living and ever conquering. 



CHAPTER II. 



A Defiance to the Reason of a Rationalist. 

YOU profess to respect the light of reason, 
and you acknowledge that evidence ob- 
liges assent. Well now, I defy your reason, pro- 
vided it considers the matter with attention, 
not to see that the divine character of Chris- 
tianity and of the Holy Scriptures shines 
forth in two different ways with the evidence 
of a fact more clear than the light of day. 

I could prove my point by presenting to 
your mind a whole chain of facts equally de- 
cisive, but I wish to curtail the rational test 
to which I invite you by choosing from among 
all these facts, the one that corresponds the 
best to the state of the errors of the day; the 
one that the " haute critique," as it is called, 
attacks. The fact whick in its turn attacks 
the 44 haute critique,'' and follows it up to its 
last entrenchments, by means of what even 
the latter acknowledges, that which it sees with 
its eyes and touches with its hands. 

What then does it acknowledge, or see, or 
hold in its hands, that can convince it? 

In the first place two books, whose antiquity 
it acknowledges, and which are known by the 

35 



36 



A DEFIANCE TO THE 



names of the New and the Old Testament. It 
acknowledges that the first, even with regard 
to the most recent events that are recorded 
therein, is anterior by many centuries to the 
second, and that the second, in the very 
form in which we now have it, dates at least 
from the end of the first century of our era. 

This is all that is necessary. It is 
enough to place this book of the Old Testa- 
ment, with the antiquity that it is granted it 
possesses, face to face with Christ and the 
Gospels; it is enough to place the book of the 
Gospels, the New Testament, with the anti- 
quity which is granted to it, face to face with 
the fact of the Church, such as it exists under 
your very eyes, to prove evidently the divine 
mission of Jesus Christ, the divine mission of 
the Church, and the divine character of the 
Scriptures. Let us see, then, if this is suffi- 
cient. 

I. 

THE BIBLICAL FACT OF THE TWO TESTAMENTS FROM THE 
POINT OF VIEW OF REASON. 

"Do not let infidels think that they can es- 
cape from God," says Bossuet; "for He has 
given to His Scripture a divine mark which noth- 
ing can obliterate. This is the relation of the 
two Testaments. No one doubts that the Old 
Testament was written before the New. 
Nothing more is required. By the relation 
which these Testaments bear to one another 



REASON OF A RATIONALIST. 



37 



both the one and the other are proved to be 
divine. Both have the same design and end in 
view; the one prepares the way for the perfec- 
tion which the other shows forth; the one lays 
the foundation, the other completes the edifice. 
In one word, the one predicts what the other 
shows as accomplished. Thus all ages are 
united together, and the eternal design of Divine 
Providence is revealed to us." 

You see that Bossuet does not ask you to 
believe without proofs. He does not de- 
mand at first an act of faith in the 
Bible, but an act of reason, and he defies 
your reason to escape from God and to look 
without seeing, and without seeing evidently 
in the Scriptures the work of Him who, 
"holding all things in his hands, could alone 
begin and continue a plan in which all ages are 
comprised." 

No one is obliged to believe without seeing 
that he is bound to believe according to the 
words of St. Thomas Acquin: " Nemo enim 
c rede ret nise vide ret ea esse credenda" and 
that reason, before giving assent by faith to the 
word of God, must see that it is really God that 
speaks. '* Look then, and you will see: What is 
the soul of the whole of the Old Testament ? M 
What is the thought that makes its unity 
even according to the opinion of rationalists? 
It is the thought of the Messiah It is what 
the ideologists now-a-days call the "Messianic 
idea" as if by a mere word they could get rid of 



33 



A DEFIANCE TO THE 



the immortai fact which forces itself upon 
them.* 

It is so constant that the whole ancient law 
tends to the Messias, whom the Jews still ex- 
pect according to those words which, as well 
as all others, will be accomplished: "I have 
come in the name of my Father, and you have 
not received me; another will come, in his 
own name, and him you will receive." 

The Incarnate Word here speaks of the great 
impostor who will one day usurp the place of 
Christ among all the people, beginning with 
the Jews, who will think to find in him the one 
whom they have always expected. If they 
have always expected him, it is because the 
old law, by its institutions, its figures and its 
prophecies, wholly tended to Christ as to its 
centre. 



* Faith in the fall of man, and the expectation of his 
Redemption by the Desiied of the nations, does not be- 
long to one people alone, but to all nations. The uni- 
versality of bloody sacrifices is but the expression of one 
and of the other, and as the deep shadow of the prim- 
itive revelation. The frivolity of the eighteenth cen- 
tury has made vain efforts to escape from this sombre 
vision or to misinterpret its meaning; a meaning proved 
invincibly by universal traditions, which no longer 
render it possible for science to doubt of the thought or 
remembrance of the human race. But in this place we 
do not wish to insist upon a fact that we have proved 
at length elsewhere. You will there see that in spite of 
their profanation by idolatry, the general traditions are 
still intelligible. But here we only rest our argument on 
the Bible, where these traditions have remained unpro* 
faned. 



REASON OF A RATIONALIST. 



39 



Let us follow the great lines of this written 
monument. The divine promise is engraven 
on the very frontispiece of the monument, on 
the first page of the Bible, along with the his- 
tory of our origin. We there see the woman 
seduced by the spirit of disobedience and re- 
volt, causing the head of humanity to partake 
in her fall. But at the same time we see the 
promised woman, the woman by excellence, 
the new Eve, the Mother of the human race 
which is regenerated by Him who is to be 
born of her one day, and triumph over the con- 
queror of the first Eve. 44 Et ait Dominus Deus 
ad serpe ntem: Inimiciiias ponam inter te et 
midierem, et semen tuum et semen illius; ipsa 
conteret caput tuum.* 9 * 

It was not till several centuries after the 
dispersion of the family of Noe that idolatry 
began to spread itself over the earth. But at the 
very commencement of this great heresy of 
olden times God protested against it, and pro- 
tested as became God, by making a whole 
people a living monument raised to keep 
alive the memory of the creation, of the prim- 
itive revelation, and of the expected Re- 
demption. It was to the father of this 
monumental people, placed in the midst of 
the great infidel empires, that God solemnly 
renewed his former promises: 44 In thy seed 



* (Gen. iii. 15.) " I will put enmities between thee 
and the woman, and thy seed and her seed; she shall 
crush thy head." 



40 



A DEFIANCE TO THE 



shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." — 
(Gen. xxii. 18.) 

The first born of the father of the faithful, 
Isaac, like Abraham, hears the same divine 
words: " In thy seed shall all the nations of the 
earth be blessed/' — (Gen. xxvi. 4.) And Isaac 
himself, the obedient victim, becomes the strik- 
ing figure of Christ, carrying, twenty centuries 
before the Incarnation, the word of his sacri- 
fice to Calvary. 

Israel, the father of the twelve tribes, when 
dying, foretells the future to his sons, and 
when he speaks to the chief of that great tribe 
which was one day to absorb all the others 
and give them its own name {Judo), he marks 
the time of the Messias with the greatest clear- 
ness. " The sceptre shall not be taken away 
from Juda, nor a ruler from his thigh, till he 
come that is to be sent, and he shall be the 
expectation of nations." — (Gen. xlix. 10.) 

Three things are here mentioned : the 
Jewish nation will lose its power; it will lose it 
completely at the time of the Messias, and this 
ruin, or the end of the ancient alliance, will 
be the epoch of the universal alliance made by 
Him who is the expectation of the nations. 

The prophecy of Jacob is verified to the 
letter. When Jesus was born in the city of 
David, the Jews were for the first time de- 
prived of the sovereign power, and Herod, the 
first stranger who had reigned over Judea, 
had received his power from the senate and the 
Roman people. Thirty-eight years after the 



REASON OF A RATIONALIST. 



41 



death of Christ the remainder of the Jewish 
constitution perished with the holy city and 
the Temple, whilst the reign of the Desired 
of the Nations, the empire of the faith, took 
roo t in the whole world : "7// universo viundo!* 
—(Col. i. 6.) 

Joseph, Moses, Josue, and the Judges 
appear, one after the other, as the living 
prophecies, nay, as such striking figures of 
Jesus Christ, that one would think they had 
been painted after His coming, except that 
the Jewish people itself are their depositories. 

The royal prophet, the Psalmist enlightened 
from above, says that the Messias has to be 
born of his family, and speaks in terms which 
we ourselves still employ as our own after 
three thousand years, so full are they of that 
word which does not pass away. He saw the 
superhuman majesty of that Son whom he calls 
his Lord (Ps. cix. 1), and at the same time he 
saw that Son suffering and sacrificed; he 
speaks in the name of that great victim, and 
exclaims: "They gave gall for my food, and 
in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. 
They have torn my flesh till they could count 
my bones. They parted my garments amongst 
them, and upon my vesture they cast lots. I 
am the reproach of men, and the outcast of 
the people. All they that saw me have 
laughed me to scorn; they have spoken with 
the lips, and wagged the head. He hoped in 
the Lord, let him deliver him." — (Ps. lxviii. 
22. Ps. xxi.) 



42 



A DEFIANCE TO THE 



Thus was the scene of Calvary written a 
thousand years beforehand; in the very 
psalm, the first words of which Jesus Christ 
dying on the cross addressed to His Father in 
the last moment of voluntary abandonment 
that accomplished our Redemption: "My 
God, my God, why hast thou abandoned me." 

David saw Christ born from all eternity (Ps. 
ii. 7.); and at the same time he saw him the re- 
proach of men (Ps. xxi. 7), he saw him dying 
and triumphing^ judge of nations, victim and 
priest forever, and he foretold even the very 
rite of the new sacrifice, which shall never 
more be abolished. " Thou art a priest for- 
ever, according to the order of Melchisedech." 
— (Ps. cix.) 

The prophet Micheas speaks at one and 
the same time of the obscure place of the tem- 
poral birth of the Messias, and of the glorious 
place of his eternal birth in the bosom of his 
Father: " And thou Bethlehem art a little one 
among the thousands of Juda; out of thee 
shall he come forth whose going forth 
is from the beginning, from the days of eter- 
nity." — (Mich. v. 3.) 

Isaias, eight centuries before the Incarna- 
tion, contemplates the Virgin, who was to 
give birth to the Emmanuel ox The God with us. 
The prophet speaks of the God made man, 
of His life, of His actions, of His sufferings, of 
the cause and fruit of His death, of the Re- 
demption, of the vocation ot the Gentiles, as 
a real evangelist of the Old Testament: "Who 



REASON OF A RATIONALIST. 43 



hath believed our report ? and to whom is the 
arm of God revealed? And he shall grow 
up as a tender plant before him, and as a 
root out of thirsty ground; there is no beauty 
in him, or comeliness, and we have seen him, 
and there was no sightliness that we should 
be desirous of him; despised and the most ab- 
ject of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted 
with infirmity: and his look was as it were 
hidden and despised, whereupon we esteemed 
him not. Surely he hath borne our iniquities 
and carried our sorrows; and we have thought 
him as it were a leper, and as one struck by 
God and afflicted. But he was wounded for 
our iniquities, lie was bruised for our sins; the 
chastisement of our peace was upon him, and 
by his bruises we are healed. All we like sheep 
have gone astray; everyone hath turned aside 
into his own way, and the Lord hath laid on 
him the iniquity of us all. He was offered be- 
cause it was his own will, and he opened not 
his mouth: he shall be led as a sheep to the 
slaughter, and shall be dumb as a lamb before 
his shearer, and he shall not open his mouth. 
He was taken away from distress and from 
judgment; who shall declare his generation? 
because he is cut off out of the land of the 
living; for the wickedness of my people have 1 
struck him, * * * And the Lord was pleased 
to bruise him in infirmity; if he shall lay down 
his life for sin, he shall see a long-lived seed, 
and the 7vill of the Lord shall be prosperous in 
his hand. Because his soul hath labored he 



44 



A DEFIANCE TO THE 



shall see and be filled; by his knowledge shall 
this my just servant justify many, and he shall 
bear their iniquities. Therefore will I distrib- 
ute to him very many, and he shall divide 
the spoils of the strong, because he hath de- 
livered his soul unto death, and was reputed 
with the wicked, and he hath borne the sins 
of many, and hath prayed for the transgres- 
sors. Give praise, then, O thou (Church of the 
nations) barren that bearest not, and make a 
joyful noise, thou that didst not travail with 
child, for many are the children of the deso- 
late, more than of her that hath a husband, 
saith the Lord. Enlarge the place of thy tent, 
and stretch out the skins of thy tabernacle; 
spare not; lengthen thy cords and strengthen 
thy stakes. For thou shalt pass to the right 
hand and to the left; and thy seed shall in- 
herit the Gentiles, and shall inhabit the deso- 
late cities. Fear not, for thou shalt not be 
confounded, nor blush, for thou shalt not be 
put to shame, because thou shalt forget the 
shame of thy youth, and shalt remember no 
more the reproach of thy widowhood. For 
he that hath made thee shall rule over thee. 
The Lord of hosts is his name; and thy re- 
deemer, the holy one of Israel, shall be called 
the God of all the earih^ — (Is. 53, 54.) 

Aggeus, in presence of the second temple, 
consoled the old people who remembered with 
tears in their eyes the glory of the first tem- 
ple, and told them that the first would be sur- 
passed by the last in glory, because in it would 



REASON OF A RATIONALIST. 45 



the Desired of the nations appear. — (Agg. ii. 8.) 

Malachy spoke of the sacrifice which was 
not to be offered only in Jerusalem, but every- 
where, and speaks of the universality of the ob- 
lation of the victim without blemish as the 
royal prophet had spoken of its perpetuity: 
"For from the rising of the sun even to the 
going down, my name is great among the Gen- 
tiles * and in every place is there sacrifice, and 
there is offered in my name a clean oblation, 
for my name is great among the Gentiles, saith 
the Lord of Hosts." — (Malach. i. n.) 

But when will this great victim be immo- 
lated ? 

The years till his coming have been counted 
by Daniel the prophet, who marks with a pre- 
cision which is crushing to incredulity the 
great events which were to precede, to accom- 
pany, and to follow the death of Christ. 

Daniel, an exile at Babylon, prayed for the 
deliverance of his people, and thought on the 
seventy years of captivity foretold by Jere- 
mias. It was at this moment that the years 
fixed for the deliverance of the whole human 
race from captivity, of which the first deliver- 
ance was only the figure, was all at once re- 
vealed to him: " Now, while I was yet speak- 
ing and praying and confessing my sins, and 
the sins of Israel, my people, and present- 
ing my supplications in the sight of my God, 
for the holy mountain of my God; as I was 
yet speaking in prayer, behold the man Gabriel 
whom I had seen in the vision at the begin- 



46 



A DEFIANCE TO THE 



ning, flying swiftly, touched me at the time of 
the evening sacrifice. And he instructed me 
and spoke to me, and said: O Daniel, I am now 
come forth to teach thee, and that thou 
mightest understand. From the beginning 
of thy prayer the word came forth, and I am 
come io show it to thee, because thou art a man 
of desires; therefore do thou mark the word and 
understand the vision. 

''The seventy weeks are shortened upon thy 
people, and upon thy holy city, that transgres- 
sion maybe finished and sin may have an end, 
and iniquity may be abolished, and everlasting 
justice may be brought, and vision and pro- 
phecy may be fulfilled, and the Saint of Saints 
may be anointed. 

"Know thou therefore and take notice, that 
from the going forth of the word, to build up 
Jerusalem again unto Christ the prince, there 
shall be seven weeks, and sixty-two weeks; 
and the street shall be built again, and the 
walls in troublesome times. And after sixty- 
two weeks Christ shall be slain; and the 
people that deny him shall not be his. And 
a people with their leader that shall come, 
shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and 
the end thereof shall be waste, and after the 
end of the war the appointed desolation. And 
he shall confirm the covenant with many, in 
one week; and in the half of the week, the 
victim and the sacrifice shall fail, and there 
shall be in the temple the abomination of 
desolation; and the desolation shall continue, 



REASON OF A RATIONALIST. 47 



even to the consummation, and to the end." 
— (Dan. ix. 21-27.) 

Of whom does the prophet here speak ? 
who is that Christ who is to come and who is 
to be put to death ? 

Christ means the anointed of the Lord. 
The pontiffs, the kings, and all those who re- 
ceived the sacred unction, are called Christs 
in the Holy Scriptures. But here there is 
question of the Pontiff by excellence, of the 
King whose reign in this world, is not of this 
world, of the Messias, whose expectation is 
the whole foundation of the law and the pro- 
phets. 

It is the Christ that is here spoken of who 
will receive the supreme unction, or the 
sovereign communication of power, by the 
union of the human nature with the divine: 
M The kings of the earth stood, and the princes 
assembled together against the Lord, and 
against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast 

ANOINTED." (Acts iv. 26.) 

In fine there is question of the Saviour of 
the world. How can this be doubted ? Who, 
if not he alone is to fulfil the prophecies, blot 
out iniquity, and make eternal justice appear 
on the earth, receive that special miction in 
virtue of which he will bear a name that none 
other has had, the name of the Holy of 
Holies* ' But when will he come ? 

" " The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the 
power of the Most High shall overshadow thee, and 
therefore also the Holy which shall be born of thee 



4 8 



A DEFIANCE TO THE 



Instead of the seventy years predicted by 
Jeremias, Daniel sees seventy weeks, dating 
from after the ordinance given by Artaxerxes, 
in the twentieth year of his reign (II. Esdr. • 
ii. i) # ordering the rebuilding of the town of 
Jerusalem. Daniel announces in the most 
precise terms, at the end of these weeks, " the 
remission of sins, the eternal reign of justice, 
the entire accomplishment of the prophecies, 
and the anointing of the Saint of Saints. 
The Christ is to enter on his career, and to 
appear as the leader of the people after sixty- 
nine weeks. "After sixty-nine weeks, the 
prophet says again, "the Christ is to be put to 
death •'' he is to die a violent death, he must 
be immolated to accomplish the mysteries. 
One week is especially mentioned amongst the 
rest, and this is the last, and the seventieth, 
the great week, in which the Christ will be 
immolated, in which the alliance will be con- 
firmed, and during which the holocausts and 
sacrifices of the law shall be abolished by 
Him, who came to accomplish all its figures. 
After the death of the Christ and the abolition 
of the sacrifices, nothing but horrors and con- 
fusion shall be seen, the ruin of the Holy 
City and the Sanctuary, a people and a general 
who come to destroy everything, the abomina- 
tion in the temple, the final desolation of that 
people ungrateful to their Saviour, and a 
desolation without remedy. 

shall be called the Son of God."— (St. Luke i. 35.) This 
was the moment of the Unction or Incarnation. 



REASON OF A RATIONALIST. 



49 



But how can so many events be accom- 
plished in so short a time? The rebuilding of 
a strong city, the coming, the life and the death 
of the Christ, his alliance with the nations, 
the arrival of hostile forces to fight the former 
people of God, the siege and destruction 
of their capital, the utter ruin of this people; 
how can so many events take place in the 
space of seventy weeks ? To understand this 
we must know that the word week {Jiebdomas y 
i. e. scptenarius) is applied among the Hebrews 
to years as well as to days, as is evident from 
many passages of Holy Scripture, for example, 
in the prescription of Leviticus regarding the 
fiftieth year, or the year of jubilee: "You 
shall reckon seven weeks of years, that is to 
say, seven times seven, in all forty-nine years." 
— (Lev. xxv. 8.) The seventy weeks of Daniel 
therefore comprise four hundred and ninety 
years.* 

* The seventy weeks of Daniel are holy weeks, such 
as were recognized hy the law of the Jews, and each 
week was made up of seven years, as we see proved in 
the third hook of Moses (xxv. 8), and as we also see 
among other peoples, among the Etruscans, for example, 
and the Romans. 

The Talmud makes express mention of this kind of 
weeks. Moreover the rabbis themselves, in spite of their 
blindness, have never understood in any other se?ise the 
weeks of which Daniel speaks, as can be seen in the com- 
mentaries of the rabbis, Sardia Gaon and Abbea Esra, 
on this prophet. 

"Just as an ordinary week is composed of seven 
days, which ends with a holy day and a day of rest, so 
seven years among the Jews made a week which ended 



50 



A DEFIANCE TO THE 



The four hundred and ninety years, says the 
prophet, were to pass from the time when the 
order was given to rebuild the temple of 
Jerusalem, until the coming of Christ. This 
order was given in the twentieth year of the 
reign of Artaxerxes, as Esdras relates. Now 
the twentieth year of Artaxerxes coincides with 
the last of the eighty-first Olympiad, or with 
the year three hundred of Rome, and the 
three thousand five hundred and fiftieth of 
the world, for it is proved by the testimony 
of Thucydides, of Charon of Lamsace, of the 
Persian annals of Cornelius Nepos, and of 
Eusebius, that Artaxerxes began his reign in 
the last year of the seventy-sixth Olympiad, 
or in the year two hundred and eighty of 
Rome, since they affirm that Themistocles, 

1 v a Sabbatical or holy year, during which no one could 
labor or sow, and which was especially dedicated to re- 
pose and festivals. According to the same analogy, 
and in a superior order, seven weeks of years, or forty- 
nine years, formed another more important week, a 
cycle, an epact, which ended in a Sabbatical year still 
more solemn. This year was called the great Sabbath y or 
the holy year of 'jubilee , in which all properties returned 
to their ancient proprietors, all slaves obtained their lib- 
erty, and the whole nation its renewal, so to speak, with 
great festivity. This was an image of the great restora- 
tion of the human race by Jesus Christ. Besides this, 
every seven years, that is to say, after seven years of ser- 
vice, the Jewish slave obtained his freedom, and all were 
released from their debts. The seventy weeks of Daniel 
are therefore weeks of years, each week being made up 
of seven years, and altogether making four hundred and 
ninety years up to the time that the deliverance was to 
take place." 



REASON OF A RATIONALIST. 



51 



having become the victim of ostracism at 
Athens, addressed himself in this very same 
year to Artaxerxes, who had just ascended the 
throne. The twentieth year of his reign 
would therefore be the year three hundred of 
the Roman calendar.* 

" Hence," says Bossuet, " the computation of 
the weeks is easily made, or rather it is already 
made. You have only to add to the 453 
years elapsed from the three hundredth year 
of Rome, or the twentieth of Artaxerxes, until 
the commencement of the common era, the 30 
years to this era, which bring us down to the 
fifteenth year of Tiberias and to the baptism of 
our Lord. You will thus obtain 483 years. Of 
the seven which still remain to make up the 490 
years, the fourth, which is the mean, is that in 
which Jesus died; thus all that Daniel fore- 
told evidently took place in the time which is 
announced. Moreover, there is no need of 
such exactness, for it is not necessary to take 
the mean pointed out by Daniel in its most 
rigorous sense. The most exigent would be 
satisfied if they found it anywhere between 
these two extremes. I make this remark that 
those may have no scruple who put the begin- 
ning of Artaxerxes, or the death of our Lord, a 



* It was the custom of the Persians that the King 
should associate his son in the empire. Xerxes did this 
with regard to Artaxerxes. According to certain 
authors, the twenty years of which Esdras makes men- 
tion, must be counted from the first crowning of Ar- 
taxerxes by his father. 



52 



A DEFIANCE TO THE 



little earlier or a little later, and that those who 
try to make difficulties about what is clear by 
means of the subtilties of chronology, lay 
aside such useless cavilling. God has settled 
the difficulty, if difficulty there ever was, by a 
decision which cannot be called into ques- 
tion. A manifest event puts us above all the 
subtilties of chronologists, and the total ruin of 
the Jews, which followed so close on the death 
of our Lord, makes the most obtuse see the 
accomplishment of the prophecy. " 

Moreover, the prophet had given to him 
not only a general view of these great events. 
God showed them to him in detail, with their 
terrible and divine connection. Christ is put 
to death, the people w r ho reject him are no 
longer his people; another people, the instru- 
ment of divine justice, comes with its chief 
and destroys the City and the Sanctuary; 
the sacrifices of the law disappear with the 
temple; the New Alliance commences with the 
new sacrifice, and while it extends among the 
nations, the ruin of Juda is consummated 
without 'hope of restoration. 

Is all this prophecy, or is it history? 

Those who resist the light of the faith 
would wish that the whole book of Daniel were 
a book written after the events mentioned in 
it, but this divine history had already been 
translated into Greek by the authors of the 
Septuagint under Ptolemy Philadelphus, and 
Josephus the Jew relates that it had been 
formerly shown to Alexander the Great when 



REASON OF A RATIONALIST. 



53 



he came to Jerusalem, and that this famous 
captain saw from other parts of the same 
prophecy, which we shall cite iater on, how 
the time of his passage in this world was 
marked therein. 

Though with an interval of several centuries, 
Jacob and Daniel therefore announced the 
same events, each making mention of different 
circumstances, which were all united together 
in their accomplishment, in a prodigious, 
supernatural, and evidently divine manner. 

In the word spoken to Abraham, Christ is 
shown as the Blessing of the people; in the word 
spoken to Jacob, Christ is called the Expecta- 
tion of the people; in the word spoken to 
Aggeus he is named, the Desired of the nations; 
in the word spoken to Daniel he is announced 
as the Bond of the people, as the Author of the 
Universal Alliance. But the perpetuity of his 
reign is revealed by the same prophet, not 
only in its relations with the Jewish people, 
but with the ge?ieral history of the great em- 
pires. 

The prophet saw this succession of the 
empires on two se/eral occasions; first when 
he related and explained to Nabuchodonosor 
the mysterious dream which troubled the 
mind of the king of Babylon, even when he 
had forgotten what he had dreamed: 
" Thou, O king, sawest and behold, there 
was as it were a great statue; this statue, 
which was great and high, tall of stature, 
stood before thee, and the look thereof was 



54 



A DEFIANCE TO THE 



terrible. The head of this statue was of fine 
gold, but the breast and arms of silver, and 
the belly and thighs of brass: and the legs of 
iron, the feet part of iron and part of clay. 
Thus thou sawest, till a stone was cut out of 
the mountain, without hands, and it struck the 
statue upon the feet thereof that were of iron 
and of clay, and broke them in pieces. Then 
was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, 
and the gold broken to pieces together, and 
became like the chaff of a summer s thrashing 
floor, and they were carried away by the wind, 
and there was no place found for them; but the 
stone that strtick the statue beca7ne a great 
moun tain and filled the whole earth. 

" This is the dream; we will also tell the 
interpretation thereof before thee, O king. 
Thou art the king of kings; and the God of 
heaven hath given thee a kingdom, and 
strength, and power, and glory. Thou there- 
fore art the head of gold. And after thee 
shall rise up another kingdom, inferior to thee, 
of silver; and another third kingdom of brass, 
which shall rule over all the world. And the 
fourth kingdom shall be as of iron. As iron 
breaketh into pieces and subdueth all things, 
so shall that break and destroy all those. 

" And whereas thou sawest the feet and the 
toes, part of potter's clay, and part of iron, 
the kingdom shall be divided, but yet it shall 
take its origin from the iron, according as thou 
sawest the iron mixed with the miry clay. And 
as the toes of the feet were part of iron and 



REASON OF A RATIONALIST. 



55 



part of clay, the kingdom shall be partly strong 
and partly broken; and whereas thou sawest 
the iron mixed with the miry clay, they shall 
be mingled indeed together with the seed of 
man, but they shall not stick fast one to 
another, as iron cannot be mixed with clay. 
But in the days of those kingdoms, the God 
of heaven will set up a kingdom, that shall 
never be destroyed, and his kingdom shall 
not be delivered up to another people, and it 
shall break in pieces and shall consume all 
these kingdoms, and itself shall stand forever. 
According as thou sawest that the stone was 
cut out of the mountain without hands, and 
broke in pieces' the clay, the iron, and the brass, 
and the silver, and the gold, the great God 
hath shown the king what shall come to pass 
hereafter, and the dream is true and the in- 
terpretation thereof is faithful." — (Dan. ii. 31- 

45.) 

Here we see the empire of the Assyrians, the 
empire of the Persians, the empire of the 
Greeks, and lastly the empire of the Romans, 
subjugating the nations and uniting them to- 
gether, but by bonds that were to be broken. 
These four empires form in reality only one, the 
empire of force — the empire of man. It passes 
from one nation to another, but it does not 
change. The gold, silver, brass and iron, are 
the same statue with feet of clay. The em- 
pire of grace and truth strikes against the base 
of this empire of force. The stone detached 
from the mountain, without any human aid, 



A DEFIANCE TO THE 



the Christ, the Son of Man, born of our human 
race, by an immediate act of the omnipotence 
of God, has broken the statue of the empire 
of idolatry, and founded the spiritual empire, 
the Universal Church, from which the author- 
ity shall never be taken away. " The gates of 
hell shall not prevail against it." — (St. Matt, 
xvi. 18.) 

This succession of empires, or of the em- 
pire of this world, till the reign of Christ, was 
a second time revealed to Daniel under an- 
other figure. 

" In the first year of Baltassar, king of Baby- 
lon, Daniel saw a dream. 

44 1 saw in my vision by night, and behold 
the four winds of the heavens strove upon 
the great sea, and four great beasts, different 
one from another, came up out of the sea. 
The first was like a lioness, and had the wings 
of an eagle; I beheld till her wings were plucked 
off, and she was lifted up from the earth, and 
stood upon her feet as a man, and the heart 
of a man was given to her. 

"And behold another beast like a bear stood 
up on one side; and there were three rows in 
the mouth thereof, and in the teeth thereof, 
and thus they said to it: Arise, devour much 
flesh. After this I beheld, and lo, another 
like a leopard, and it had upon it four wings, 
as of a fowl, and the beast had four heads, 
and power was given to it. After this I be- 
held in the vision of the night, and lo, a fourth 
beast, terrible and wonderful and exceeding 



REASON OF A RATIONALIST. 



57 



strong, it had great iron teeth, eating and 
breaking in pieces, and treading down the rest 
-.vith its feet, and it was unlike to the other 
beasts, which I had seen before it, and had 
ten horns. I considered the horns, and behold 
another little horn sprung out of the midst 
of them; and three of the first horns were 
plucked up at the presence thereof; and be- 
hold, eyes like the eyes of a man were in this 
horn, and a mouth speaking great things. 

" I beheld till thrones were placed, and the 
ancient ,of the days sat; his garment was 
white as snow, and the hair of his head like 
clean wool; his throne like flames of fire; the 
wheels of it like burning fire. A swift stream 
of fire issued forth from before him; thou- 
sands and thousands ministered to him, and 
ten thousand times ten thousand stood before 
him; the judgment sat and the books were 
opened. I beheld because of the voice of the 
great words which that horn spoke; and I 
saw that the beast was slain, and the body 
thereof was destroyed, and given to the fire 
to be burnt, and that the power of the other 
beasts was taken away, and that times of life 
were appointed them for a time and a time. 

" I beheld therefore, in the vision of the 
night, and lo, one like the Son of Man came 
with the clouds of heaven, and he came even 
to the ancient of days, and they presented 
him before him, and he gave him power and 
glory and a kingdom, and all peoples, tribes, 
and tongues shall serve him; his power is an 



53 



A DEFIANCE TO THE 



everlasting power that shall not be taken 
away, and his kingdom shall not be de- 
stroyed. 

" My spirit trembled. I, Daniel, was af- 
frighted at these things, and the visions of 
my head troubled me. I went near to one of 
them that stood by, and asked the truth of 
him concerning all these things, and he told 
me the interpretation of the words, and in- 
structed me. 

44 These four great beasts are four king- 
doms which shall arise out of the earth, but 
the saints of the most high God shall take 
the kingdom, and they shall possess the king- 
dom forever and ever." — (Dan. vii. 1-18.) 

The four great beasts which came out of 
the sea are, therefore, the four great empires 
prefigured in the former prophecy, by the 
gold, the silver, t-he brass, and the iron, but 
shown forth in this prophecy in a still more 
striking manner. They came out of the vast 
waters, which are the nations of the earth. 
" The waters which thou sawest are peoples 
and nations and tongues." — (Apoc. xvii. 15.) 
In fact it is from their flux and reflux, from 
the movements which the tempest of the times 
causes in them, that the kingdoms arise, 
which God gives to the world in his justice or 
mercy. The lion and the eagle represent the 
empire of the Assyrians, the bear of iron that 
of the Medes and Persians, the panther and 
leopard with four wings and four heads, f he 
rapid conquests of Alexander, whose empire 



REASON OF A RATIONALIST 



59 



was divided into four empires. The last and 
most formidable beast, in fine, who crushes, 
devours, and treads under foot what re- 
mains, is the great Rome, the mistress of the 
nations. But what the prophet saw before, as 
a stone detached from the mountain, without 
the help of man, and which, after having 
broken the iron, brass, silver and gold of the 
the statue of Nabuchodonosor, becomes a 
great mountain and fills the whole earth, in 
this place he calls the Son of Man, and his 
kingdom, the kingdom of the Saints of the 
Most High, the spiritual empire which shall 
have 110 end. And such indeed will be the 
case, for after having lasted on earth till the 
end of time, the Church Militant will become 
the Church Triumphant in heaven.* 

* Daniel did not only announce the succession of the 
four great empires, but he entered into details of their 
history, the accomplishment of which history itself 
testifies to, as all interpreters show. He especially 
mentions the rapid conquests of Alexander the Great, 
his sudden death, and the sharing out of his kingdom; 
the power of Antiochus, his pride, impiety, cruelty, and 
his death, which was the effect of the divine justice; the 
wars of the kings of Egypt and of Asia, their alliances, 
their quarrels, their feigned reconciliations, and their 
hypocrisy. 

He speaks of these future events with such clearness, 
that some authors have dared to advance that the book 
which bears his name Was not really his, but was written 
by an author who lived at the time of Antiochus. They 
sought thus to weaken the authority of this divine 
book, irritated as they were to see marked therein 
so clearly, the time of the coming of the Messias* 
His death, the establisluneni of His reign, and His 



6o 



A DEFIANCE TO THE 



It is this empire or reign of Christ that the 
very same angel that was sent to Daniel an- 
nounced in the following words to the New 
Eve, to the mother of the new man, the head 
of the regenerated human race. " Hail, full 
of grace! the Lord is with thee; Blessed art 
thou among women. * * * Fear not, 
Mary, for thou hast found grace with 
God. Behold, thou shalt conceive in thy 
womb, and shalt bring forth a son, and thou 
shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, 
and shall be called the Son of the Most High. 
* * * And of his kingdom there shall be 
no end.' 1 — (St. Luke i. 28, 30-33.) 

We have cited but a few passages of the 
prophetic book to whose antiquity an irre- 
futable testimony is rendered by the chosen 
people, now become the enemies of Christ; a 
wondrous people, dead yet still living, dead 
as a people, living as a testimony to God, the 
incorruptible guardian of the law which con- 
demns them, the faithful depositary of the 
book which proves their infidelity, and where- 
in all is written down, even their own blind- 
ness ! 

We now ask of rationalists: Is it possible to 



everlasting power. But it is easy to refute these 
calumnies. This book had been received by the Tews a 
long time before Antiochus. The authors of the Septu- 
agint had translated it a hundred years before him, and 
according to Josephus himself {Ant. i. 2. c. 8), this 
book was shown to Alexander the Great to show him 
what Daniel had written of him, 



REASON OF A RATIONALIST. 



6l 



deny that the history of Christ is written be- 
forehand in the Old Testament, and hence 
not to recognize the hand of the Master of 
all tirne ? We can understand that it is pos- 
sible through prejudice and obstinacy to re- 
fuse to acknowledge Jesus Christ in one or 
other trait of the prophecies taken separately; 
but how can one shut his eyes to the union 
and harmony of all these rays of light ? For 
what is wanting ? Is not the idea of the Saviour 
clearly contained? Do not the hope and ex- 
pectation of the Messias exist from the very 
beginning ? Is not the time of the coming most 
precisely marked out ? Is not the succession 
of the empire up to the time of His coming 
grandly portrayed, so that the Universal His- 
tory of Bossuet is but a commentary on the 
the book of Daniel ? Is not the state of Israel, 
or rather of Juda, at the birth of the Messias 
clearly denned ? Are not the characteristics 
of the Messias regarding His birth, His life, 
His passion, His death, His works and His im- 
mortal reign, all verified in Jesus Christ ? 

But let us turn our eyes again for the last 
time to the Old Testament, that wonderful 
prophecy of Christ. What do we see in it, if 
we consider it as a whole? A protest against 
the defection of the idolatrous nations, and a 
prediction of the calling back of these people 
to the truth of the vocation of the Gentiles by 
Christ. Christ is therefore the central point 
to which all the facts of the Bible converge, 
the key-stone of the two Testaments, the great 



62 



A DEFIANCE TO THE 



figure whose light dissipates all the shadows 
of the Scriptures. But we must well remark 
the trait in this great figure so admirably 
drawn by the prophets, which gives the last 
irrefutable proof of the inspiration of the 
prophecies: the person of the Messias unites 
therein qualities apparently so contradictory, 
that the synagogue, not knowing how to con- 
ciliate them, either passed over this difficulty 
in silence, or imagined two Christs to explain 
it. In fact the Messias appears at one time 
as the last of men and the reproach of the people; 
at another time as the master and the Saviour 
of the world; now as the victim sacrificed to 
the hatred of his enemies, and then as a con- 
gueror,and as one who triumphs; in one place 
as the ruin of Israel, in another as He whose 
kingdom shall have no end. But who does not 
see how wonderfully these apparent contra- 
dictions are harmonized in Jesus Christ? Who 
does not see the great difficulty solved in him, 
the secret of ages revealed*, and revealed by the 
Incarnation, by the union of the human and 
divine nature in the person of the Word ? 
" God is in Christ reconciling the world to 
himself" (II. Cor. v. 19), and He triumphs mer- 
cifully over His own justice, by His sorrows, 
His humiliations, and by the bitter death 
which He suffers in His humanity for the sins 
of men. 

This union of the human and divine nature 
in the person, of the Word, is also the key of 
the New Testament. For does not Jesus 



REASON OF A RATIONALIST. 



63 



Christ say of Himself that He is less than His 
Father, and also that He is equal to His Father: 
u The father is greater than I; — I and the 
father are one; The father is in me, and I in 
the father/' — (St. John xiv. 28; x. 30-38). The 
fact is that He is less than His Father, as, 
44 the son of man" (St. Matt. xxvi. 64) as son 
of human nature, as son of Adam, and that 
He is equal to His Father, as the "only begot- 
ten" (St. John i. 14) and ''eternal (St. John i. 18) 
Son" of God; as 44 the figure of his sub- 
stance 1 (Heb. i. 3.); His "Word" (St John 
i. 1), his living thought, necessarily begotten 
from all eternity "in his bosom" — (St. John i. 18.) 
In short, He is the "Word Incarnate" — (St. 
John i. 14). God made man, the Supreme 
Majesty, whose love " bows the heaven to come 
down to us (Ps. xvii. 10), and clothes him with 
our nature" (Phil. ii. 7), " to make us partakers 
of his."— {II. St. Pet. i. 4.) 

This two-fold character to which His own 
words bear testimony, shines forth throughout 
His whole life c We always see strength volun- 
tarily weak, power voluntarily humbled, love 
voluntarily suffering — in one word the great 
voluntary victim. He waits till His mother 
has been cast off by her relations and obliged 
to take refuge in a stable, in order to be born. 
Nevertheless He is born where He willed 
to be born, in the city of David. It 
was indeed by the order of the Roman 
emperor that this was brought about but this 
order is an act ot His Providence. He seems 



6 4 



A DEFIANCE TO THE 



to increase in wisdom like other children of 
men, but the light that is within him breaks 
forth from time to time, and causes the doc- 
tors of the law to wonder: 44 They were as- 
tonished at his wisdom and his answers." — (St. 
Luke ii. 47.) He lived in poverty, 44 and had 
not where to lay his head" (St. Matt. viii. 20), 
but He walks on the waves, imposes silence on 
the tempest and the sea (St. Matt. xiv. 25), and 
when the ignorant ask 44 if any good can come 
from Nazareth" (St. John, i, 46), virtue goes 
forth from Him, which gives health to the sick 
and paralytic, sight to the blind, hearing to the 
deaf, life to the dead, grace to the sinner, the 
truth to all and especially to the poor. " Virtue 
went out from him, and healed all." — (St. Luke, 
vi. 19.) 4 The blind see, the lame walk, the 
deaf hear, the dead rise again, to the poor the 
gospel is preached." — (St. Lukevii. 22.) When 
the hour of His Passion came, He goes to 
meet those who seek Him, and casts them on 
the ground by this only word: 44 It is I;*! 
(St. John xviii. 6) but He gives Himself up to 
the 44 power of darkness" (St. Luke xxii. 53) be- 
cause He willed to conquer it in allowing it 
to act. He suffered therefore intensely, and 
without consolation, but it is in His death es- 
pecially that His power shines forth, since it 
is by His death that He gives us life, and that 
the regenerate world, the Universal Church, 
the true 6i Mother of the living" (Gen. iii. 20), 
comes forth from the side of the New Adam 
with the water and the blood of the Redemp- 
tion. — (St, John xix. 34.) 



REASON OF A RATIONALIST. 6 



II. 

THE BIBLICAL FACT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT IN PRES- 
ENCE OF THE FACT OF THE CHURCH, CONSIDERED IN 
ITS RELATION TO REASON. 

The Church is the great work of Jesus Christ, 
the work for which He died, and which He 
caused to be born of his blood; "which he 
hath purchased with his own blood." — (Acts, 
xx. 28.) It is of this great family, of this 
spiritual and ever-enduring society — "And of 
His kingdom there shall be no end," (St. Luke 
L 53), that He spoke to His Apostles after His 
resurrection; " for forty days appearing to 
them, and speaking of the kingdom of 
God" (Acts i. 3.); and it is this Church that 
he has announced with wonderful clearness. 

The divine character of the Scriptures is 
shown here, a second time by their harmo- 
nious unity with the great event, which they 
announce. For just as the inspiration or 
the divine origin* of the ancient prophets 

* By inspiration of the Scriptures I mean here, only 
the evidently divine character of the revelation contained 
in the Scriptures, as Bossuet understood it, w T henhesaid: 
God has given to His Scriptures a. mark of divinity 
which cannot be called in question; it is the relation be- 
tween the two testaments. The term inspiration of 
Scripture can, in fact, be understood in a general, or in 
a strict sense. According to the first meaning, which is 
the one we here make use of, it signifies the inspiration, 
or rather the revelation of the things contained in the 



66 



A DEFIANCE TO THE 



is proved by their accomplishment in 
the person of Tesus Christ. In like man- 
ner, the promise of the establishment 
of the Church foretold and described by 
the prophets, and especially by Jesus Christ, 
with wonderful exactness and a marvellous ful- 
ness of detail, will in its turn be proved to be 
divine by its complete realization. 

It is well to remark here that in order to 
render this demonstration conclusive it is not 
necessary to show the weakness of the efforts 
made in Germany, and later on in France, to dis- 
pute the historical character of the Gospels, nor 
to quote the ordinary and overwhelming proofs 
of the authenticity of the New Testament. 
It is enough for us to take the book univer- 
sally known by this name, and to ask ration- 
alists if at least they do not acknowledge that 
this book belongs to the first centuries of 
Christianity, and to the epoch of the origin of 
Christianity. Rationalism will not dispute the 
fact. This alone is enough to prove the thesis 
of Bossuet, and to say that God has given this 
book a proof of divinity which cannot be called 
in question: it is the relation of the New Tes- 
tament with the fact of the Church. In truth 
this relation proves that both are divine, the 



Scriptures. In the strict sense, it means the inspira- 
tion, properly so-called, of the Scriptures themselves. In 
order to refute rationalism it is not necessary to prove 
the inspiration of the Scriptures themselves. Rationalism 
accepts their authenticity, as we have proved before. 
This is sufficient for our present purpose. 



REASON OF A RATIONALIST. 



67 



one foretelling marvellous things which the 
other shows as accomplished. I say marvel- 
lous things, because here all is marvellous, 
all is supernatural, all is divine, both the 
words that prophesy and the things accom- 
plished. 

Let us open the Gospel, and that we em- 
brace not too much, let us choose three of 
these supernatural words. 

The first we will cite are those which 
Jesus Christ addressed to His disciples, 
when He appeared to them saying: " Peace 
be to you. And when he had said 
this, he showed them his hands and his side. 
The disciples therefore were glad when they 
saw the Lord. He said therefore to them 
again. Peace be to you. As the Father 
hath sent me, I also send you. When he had 
said this he breathed on them, and he said 
to them: Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose 
sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them y 
and whose sins you shall retain, they are re- 
tained" — [St. John xx. 19-23.) 

Evidently these words are divine, or else 
they express the creams of a madman. For 
who but God can remit sin? Who but God 
can give the Holy Ghost ? What power ex- 
cept that of the Almighty can make use of 
men to cleanse souls? Who can transmit the 
divine life of grace, by means of secondary 
causes, but He who is the first cause ? What 
a wondrous scene is this ! The divine breath, 
breathed forth, the pierced hands, glorified 



68 



A DEFIANCE TO THE 



and stretched out, those wondrous words, 
"As the Father hath sent me, I also send you. 
Receive ye the Holy Ghost Whose sins you 
shall forgive, they are forgiven them, and 
whose sins you shall retain, they are retained. " 

But if all this is divine, if these words are 
divine, their accomplishment is, so to speak, 
still more divine. 

Let rationalists and heretics open their eyes 
and look at the Catholic world. See it seek- 
ing, through all ages, since Jesus Christ, the 
forgiveness of sin, in a mannerthat God alone 
could have taught. Man kneeling before man; 
man expiating by the reality of his avowal, 
the reality of his faults: man laying bare 
his conscience and discovering the stains of 
his soul in time, that he may efface them for 
eternity; man humbling himself that he may 
be exalted. All this done by the Head of the 
Universal Church, as well as by the least of 
her children! Is it not evident that )f God 
alone could command such an expiation of 
mind and heart, that it is also God alone who 
could obtain it ? 

Yes, both the law, which no human power 
could have made, is divine, as well as the 
obedience to this law, which man would never 
have obeyed without the assistance of grace. 

Once again open your eyes, poor men 
blinded by rationalism and heresy, and behold 
what is clear as the light of day; that the 
Gospel, in the wonderful text i have cited, can 
only be fully understood by means of the 



REASON OF A RATIONALIST. 69 



divine and ever-living institution of the Sacra- 
ment of Penance; that the written testimony 
of the New Testament has need of the living 
testimony of the Church in order not to seem 
an enigma, and that placed face to face with 
one another they afford a mutual explana- 
tion. 

After having listened to the words by which 
the sacred ministry of reconciliation is founded, 
— divine words divinely realized — let us listen 
now to the words by which the perpetual 
apostolate is founded, words not less divine in 
themselves than in their accomplishment. 
We have spoken of them, it is true, when we 
showed that they are the condemnation of 
Protestantism. But they are more than this, 
they are a light revealing the most sublime 
works of God. At the same time that Christ 
was about to deprive his Apostles of His 
visible presence, He communicated to them 
His power, and promised them His invisible 
presence, a presence more intimate and effica- 
cious than the first. " All power is given to me 
in heaven and in earth. Going, therefore, 
teach ye all nations, baptizing them in the 
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the 
Holy Ghost; 'teaching them to observe all 
things whatsoever I have commanded you; 
and behold, I am with you all days, even to the 
consummation of the world." — (St. Matt, xxviii. 
18-20.) 

In these words, there is a communication 
of a triple power; of the doctrinal power; 



A DEFIANCE TO THE 



"Teach" ; of the sacramental power: "Baptiz- 
ing" ; of the power of commanding: u Teach- 
ing them to observe all things, whatsoever I 
have commanded you." All spiritual power is 
given in these words, the power of teaching, 
ministering, and commanding, but especially 
the doctrinal or teaching power, which includes 
and sustains the other two. Now, what is the 
teaching power? A universal power in matters 
of faith: " Teach all nations. " For how long 
a time? Forever. And with whose assistance ? 
With the continual assistance of God! 44 Be- 
hold, I am with you all days, even to the con-, 
summation of the world." What mere man 
has ever spoken in this way? What man could 
ever, without madness, have thought of found- 
ing an universal and a perpetual power, and 
especially a power to be exercised on the 
souls of men ? Nevertheless, He who speaks in 
this way, as master of the hearts of men and 
of all time, has He not kept His word ? Is not 
this religious teaching, which knows no limits 
of space and time, a fact which we cannot 
deny ? 

But this is not all. Jesus Christ has con- 
stituted the perpetual and universal apostolate 
of the truth in unity, and He has founded this 
unity by the authority of a supreme pastor. 
Now, the words that give to the Church its 
authority and divine constitution are not less 
divine than those already cited. These ef- 
fective words were indeed addressed to poor 
men, not chosen by the people, but chosen 



REASON OF A RATIONALIST. 7 I 

by Him who alone is great, who alone is 
master. Addressing Himself one day, there- 
fore, to one of these poor men, Jesus Christ 
said to him: "Thou art Simon, son of John. 
Thou shalt be called Cephas, which is inter- 
preted Peter." — (St. John i. 42.) Later on He 
gives us the reason of this change: it was on the 
day when Peter, faithful to the divine in- 
spiration, confessed the very first the divinity 
of Christ. " Thou art Peter," Jesus said to 
him, " and upoi this rock will I build my 
Church, and the gates of hell shall never prevail 
against it." — (St. Matt. xvi. 18.) The Church, 
that divine edifice which will never be over- 
thrown, that firm lt Column of the truth/' 
(I. Tim. iii. 15) rests therefore on Peter as on 
its foundation. It has, nevertheless, no other 
divine foundation than Jesus Christ: c< For 
other foundation no man can lay, but that 
which is laid, which is Jesus Christ" (I. Cor. 
iii. n), but it is also Jesus Christ alone who 
with His divine hand places the corner-stone 
of the perpetual Apostolate: "On this rock 
will I build." 

The words that immediately follow declare 
again the supreme authority of Peter by a 
symbol that is wonderfully clear: 

11 It is to thee that I will give the keys of 
the kingdom of heaven." — (St. Matt. xvi. 19.) 

To whom are the keys of a city given, if 
not to the sovereign? Well then, in this 
Church, which He calls the kingdom of heaven, 
in this spiritual kingdom which He predicts 



7 2 



A DEFIANCE TO THE 



will never perish, it is to Peter, and to Peter 
alone: '* To thee"; that He gives the keys, 
that is, the supreme power. 

But the power of Peter is no other than 
that of the apostolate, which is a spiritual 
power, and this is the reason why Jesus Christ, 
while foretelling to all the Apostles the trial 
of persecution, says again to Peter: " Simon, 
Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have 
you, that he may sift you as wheat; but I have 
prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not. Re- 
member, therefore, when thou shalt have arisen 
from thy fall, that it is for thee to confirm thy 
brethren. " — (St. Luke xxii. 31-32.) 

It is therefore to the chief of the teaching 
power that Jesus Christ promises indefecti- 
bility in faith — infallible fidelity. u I have 
prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not," and 
the firmness of the corner-stone will confirm 
the whole edifice:. 4 ' Confirm thy brethren." 

Jesus Christ, after his resurrection, accom- 
plished his promise to Peter in the following 
beautiful words. Peter and the other dis- 
ciples were assembled together. Christ ap- 
peared to them, and said to Simon Peter: 
" Simon, son of John, lovest thou me more 
than these? He saith to him, Yea, Lord, 
thou knowest that I love thee. Jesus said to 
him: Feed my lambs. 

"He saith to him again, Simon, son of John, 
lovest thou me? Peter answered, Yea, Lord, 
thou knowest that I love thee. Jesus said to 
him: Feed my lambs. 



REASON OF A RATIONALIST. 



73 



" He said to him the third time, Simon, son 
of John, lovest thou me ? Peter was grieved 
because he asked him a third time, and an- 
swered: Lord, thou knowest all things; you 
know that I love thee. Jesus said to him: 
Feed my sheep. 

" Amen, amen, I say to thee, when thou 
wast younger thou didst gird thvself, and didst 
walk where thou wouldst. But when thou 
shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, 
and another shall gird thee, and lead thee 
whither thou wouldst not, and this he said 
signifying by what death he should glorify 
God. And when he said this, he saith to him: 
Follow me." — (St. John xxi. 15-19.) 

Jesus Christ thus shows Peter whither the 
supreme charge will lead him — to the cross of 
his divine master; but He manifestly imposes 
this supreme charge on him, in making him 
pastor, not only of the lambs, but of their 
mothers; pastor not only of those who are 
nourished, but of those who have to give 
nourishment; pastor not only of the faithful, 
but of the pastors themselves: " Feed my 
sheep and my lambs." Peter is therefore the 
Pastor of pastors, and the Church is estab- 
lished on the unity of authority by the hier- 
archy of power, of which Peter is divinely es- 
tablished the foundation and the proof* 
M The Lord named Peter, therefore the founda- 
tion of the Church." — (St. Aug. S. 190. App. 
E. B.) u Peter in whom the primacy of the 
Apostles is pre-eminent with so excellent a 



74 



A DEFIANCE TO THE 



grace." — (Id. De Bapt. cont. Donat. i. 2.) 
tk Peter holding the princedom of the Apostol- 
ate (Id. Serm. 76, E. B.); who does not know 
that he is to be preferred to any other bishop 
by the princedom of the Apostolate?" — (Id. 
De Bapt. cont. Donat. i. 2.) He was certainly 
worthy to be the foundation-stone, and sustain- 
ing column of the house of the Lord, and to 
hold the keys of the kingdom. " — (Id. Serm. 
203, App. E. B.) 

But shall Peter be the only foundation of 
the Church during his life-time? 

" Upon this rock I will build my Church/' 
says. Jesus Christ, '* and the strength of the 
enemy shall never prevail against it." 

How shall the Church be perpetual and im- 
movable, if its foundation is not to be so? 

Just as Jesus Christ manifestly founded the 
perpetuity of the Apostolate, when He said, 
"I am with you all days, till the end of 
time," so also has He clearly established the 
perpetual apostolate of the teaching Church, 
on the immovable foundation of the authority 
of Peter^ who like the apostolic authority, dies 
not. The authority of Peter is therefore 
always living in his successors, and the See of 
Peter is forever the centre of the unity and of 
the authority of the Church. But how can 
we doubt the meaning of the texts just cited? 
Are they not divinely interpreted by their ac- 
complishment ? Let us then always place the 
Bible face to face with facts, the written monu- 
ment in presence of the living one, and not 



REASON OF A RATIONALIST. 



75 



separate what God has united. It is divine, 
without doubt, to say to a poor fisherman of 
Galilee: " I found in thee an immortal dy- 
nasty, whose power shall extend to every age/' 
but if it is divine to say this, it is still more 
divine to accomplish it. 

Come then, again, poor men, willingly blind- 
ed by rationalism and heresy, come a?id see. 
See if it is not the authority of Peter alone which 
from the centre of unity extends everywhere, 
and is everywhere impregnable. Other pow- 
ers are listened to where they are armed, and 
princes are obeyed in the lands over which 
they rule, but the power of the successor of 
St. Peter, the Papacy, is listened to where it is 
disarmed, and obeyed in the lands of which 
it is not sovereign. Then confess and die for 
the faith of which he is the organ and the 
guardian, among all nations and in every land. 
Do you not see this hierarchy, which has no 
rival, spread among all the nations, and re- 
cruited from all, even under the very eyes of 
hostile powers? This immense hierarchy has 
but one head; this head is disarmed; it speaks, 
and Catholics, who are found among all the 
nations of the world, answer with one unani- 
mous voice. How explain this mystery which 
has lasted for more than two thousand years, 
" Thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I 
build my Church." Here is the answer to the 
enigma. 

We are well aware that modern historians, 
wishing to give a natural explanation to this 



76 



A DEFIANCE TO THE 



prodigy, have pretended that the doctrinal 
authority of the Papacy only became univer- 
sal during the fifth century; but they have only 
been able to allege this by pretending to be 
ignorant of the solemn acts by which we see 
the authority of the Holy See exercised in 
the East and in the West since the origin of 
the Church. 

In the first century, St. Clement of Rome, 
the actual disciple of the Apostles, and the 
successor of St. Peter, writes to the churches 
of Greece, thereby fulfilling in their regard 
the duties imposed upon the Vicar of Jesus 
Christ by his universal jurisdiction. In the 
second century St. Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, 
who came from the East into Gaul, since he 
w T as the disciple of St. Polycarp of Smyrna, 
the latter a disciple of St. John the Evange- 
list, teaches the primacy of the See of Rome 
and the obligation which the Universal Church 
has to attach itself to this centre of unity. 

In the third century the Popes SS. Stephen 
and Denis made use of a like power in 
Asia and Africa. In the fourth century the 
great St. Athanasius of Alexandria, and the 
other bishops exiled by the Arians, were rein- 
stated in their see's by Julius the First, and 
St. John Chrysostom also reinstated by Pope 
Innocent in the See of Constantinople. 

These facts and many others suffice to 
show the shallowness of the great historians 
who, copying from one another, have not 
blushed to represent the Catholic power of 



REASON OF A RATIONALIST. 



77 



the Papacy as unknown in the first centuries. 
The Papacy, just as the Church, was, without 
doubt, the little seed spoken of in the Gospel; 
but cast into the ground by the hand of God, 
it contained from that moment, within itself, 
t,he tree which was to cast its shade over the 
whole world. Man gave no help, and if this 
seed has sprung up, and if the tree that it has 
brought forth has stretched its branches over 
the old and new world, if the power of the 
Papacy has been respected in all the Churches, 
this has been in virtue of its own divinely-con- 
stituted universal authority. " To thee will 
I give the keys of the kingdom of heaven.'* 
That is the sovereign power. " I have prayed 
for thee, that thy faith fail not." It is for thee 
to confirm thy brethren, and to feed my lambs 
and my sheep, namely, the faithful and the 
pastors. 

It is by this interior and supernatural force 
that this power has resisted every attack, 
manifesting its divine principle by its perpetual 
existence, as well as by its extension. 

At all times the poicers of this world look 
with disdain on this pontifical authority ex- 
teriorly weak. But see how God humbles 
the strong and exalts the weak. The Roman 
Empire beheaded or cast into the amphitheatre 
the Supreme Pontiffs, as well as the humblest 
Christians. During three centuries, thirty popes 
died martyrs. The Roman emperors having 
become Christian, are jealous of the spiritual 
power, and fearing that at Rome they would 



7 3 



A DEFIANCE TO THE 



occupy but a secondary rank, they go to 
Constantinople, where they try to lay hold of 
both the powers, the spiritual and the* tem- 
poral. But they grow weak, while the Papacy 
grows strong, and it is the Papacy 'that will 
deplore their fall. The middle ages come, 
peculiar times, during which, in spite of so 
many rebellious and barbarous elements, the 
Church was able to do so much that was great. 
Charlemagne reconstructed the empire of the 
West. He passes away; his work is divided, 
but the Papacy rests. At the beginning of 
modern times, Charles the Fifth seemed to 
wish to undertake again the work of Constan- 
tine, though he often injured the cause. His 
empire has passed, and the Papacy remains. 
Not long ago another Caesar appeared, who 
possessed some of the qualities of all his pre- 
decessors, of those who honor, of those w T ho 
insult, of those who defend, and of those who 
attack the Church. He traverses the world 
like a storm, blots out thrones in passing by, 
tears the Pope from his See, telling him that' 
the excommunications of an old man will not 
make the arms fall from the hands of his sol- 
diers. But behold, the blighting frost from 
above stiffens the hands of the strong. They 
let their arms fall, and God buries this new 
power in a winding sheet of snow. This power 
tried to raise itself up again, but in vain, it 
goes to die on an island in the midst of the 
sea, when the old man of the Vatican has set 
out again for Rome. 



REASON OF A RATIONALIST. 



79 



How account for this invincible weakness? 
The wise men of this world have left noth- 
ing undone to lessen in the eyes of men the 
miracle of this perpetuity. They represent 
the Papacy as a remains of the past, as an au- 
gust ruin of another age, of which nothing 
living remains but a little foreign power. 
But the Pope as prince was never a 
little power, and his power as Pope, al- 
ways great and incomparable, is no more 
a foreign power to-day than before. Do 
you wish to be convinced of this ? See 
what happens when kings are attacked, and 
when the Pope is attacked. They were both 
attacked some years ago. The crowned heads 
were forced into exile, and the Tiara also. Did 
the nations of Europe follow their kings 
whither they went ? On the contrary, did they 
not at once cling to their new leaders? But 
how did they act when the Pope left Rome ? 
Did we not then see the European powers 
follow the Pope by means of their represent- 
atives, showing themselves more uneasy than 
the Vicar of Christ himself, and they were 
only quieted when they saw him reinstated in 
the Eternal City. The reason of all this is 
that in spite of the prejudices of ignorant 
rationalism, prejudices in which these powers 
have too often a share, they felt, nevertheless, 
that the Papacy is nowhere a stranger or 
foreign; that even the temporal conditions of 
her liberty are mixed up with the great in- 
terests of the world, and that the relations of 



8o 



A DEFIANCE TO THE 



the head of the Church with the nations can- 
not be disarranged without everything being 
thrown into disorder. Yes, everything, since 
even heresy and schism depend upon it, error 
only drawing life from the truth it mutilates, 
and the heretical sects of all Christendom 
always living in its invincible unity. 

But it is time to gather together the matter 
of which we have been treating, and to cast a 
last glance on the double fact which we have 
established — the visible inspiration of the 
Scriptures of the Old Testament, by their ac- 
complishment in Jesus Christ, and the visible 
inspiration of the Scriptures of the New Tes- 
tament, by their accomplishment in the 
Church* 

There exists, therefore, a book called the 
Bible of the Old Covenant, which every 
one admits existed, and must have existed, 
centuries before Christ. The soul and aim of 
this book is the promise, the announcing, the 
expectation of the Messias. The epoch and 
the other circumstances of time in which the 
Messias was to appear, are marked in this 
book with the greatest clearness. The same 
can be said of His birth, His life, His works, 
His sufferings, His death, His glory, and His 
reign. All these circumstances are marked 
beforehand in the Old Testament, and the 



* I have already said that, here, by the inspiration of 
the Scriptures, I only mean the visibly divine character 
of the revelation which they contain. (See page 65 ), . 



REASON OF A RATIONALIST. 8l 



great figure of Christ seems therein to unite 
in Himself such apparently contradictory 
characters, that the Synagogue either keeps 
silence on this mystery, or seeks two Christs to 
explain it. The predicted time approaches. 
The state of the Jewish nation foretold by 
Jacob, the succession of the empires till the 
reign of the Son of Man, clearly indicated by 
Pavid, the end of the seventy weeks which 
the same prophet had counted till Christ's 
coming — all these facts unite to announce his 
coming. Hence the rumor of this event is. 
spread throughout all Judea, from Judea to 
the whole empire, from the empire to the 
whole universe, and this by the voice of the 
prince of historians, of the prince of orators, 
and of the prince of poets.* Jesus Christ ap- 
peared at the time marked out; He was born 
where it was foretold, lived as foretold, 
worked miracles as foretold, suffered from 
His enemies as foretold, died by a death, 
the choice of their implacable hatred, as fore- 
told, triumphed supernaturally as foretold. 

But this is not all. Vou do not yet see His 
entire action. See Him in the midst of time, 
one hand stretched over the past, the other 
over the future, and disposing of both past 
and future as their master. He who caused it 
to be written in the Gospel how he intended 
to dispose of the future, and who, by twenty 
centuries miraculously faithful in accomplish- 



*Tacitus, Cicero, and Virgil.- 



82 



A DEFIANCE TO THE 



ing His word, guarantees to us the obedience 
of future ages, till the consummation of time. 

Again, is not all this divine, both the 
prophetic words, and the facts that accomplish 
them — the words that announce the remission, 
of sins by the new priesthood, and the facts 
that attest the revelation of consciences in 
Christianity; the words that announce the 
perpetuity of the Apostolate of the teaching 
Church, and the facts that show this per- 
petuity triumphing over all human powers 
and weaknesses; the words that announce 
the unity of the Apostolate through the author- 
ity of a supreme and indefectible power, 
which Christ has placed as the foundation of 
His work, and the striking fact of this dis- 
armed power, against which we have seen 
human force break itself, and treachery fail? 
St. Augustine therefore had good reason to 
say that if the Apostles seeing Jesus Christ 
risen again, believed, and were bound to be- 
lieve in His word, which promised to them a 
Catholicity as yet invisible (St. Luke xxiv.), 
so ought we to believe in Jesus Christ actually 
invisible to us, in presence of the Catholicity 
divinely promised, which we behold. Just as 
the Apostles, while contemplating in the glory 
of his resurrection the divine architect who 
showed and explained to them the plan 
of his temple, believed in this imperishable 
building which His almighty hand was going 
to elevate by means of their weakness, in like 
manner beholding this temple, such as He 



REASON OF A RATIONALIST. 



83 



designed it, in its incomparable majesty, per- 
petuity, and unity, we confess that this work 
is doubly superhuman, in the idea that con- 
ceived it, and in the power that realized it, 
and that it is impossible to doubt that in Jesus 
Christ there is 44 the wisdom and the finger of 
God; the power of God and His wisdom." 
—(I. Cor. i. 24.) 

You see you must profit by it. The super- 
natural is living, and to be convinced of this 
you have but to open your eyes. 

What have you done, therefore, when you pre- 
tended that faith forbids all examination of 
reason ? You have confounded the examination 
of the fact of revelation and its invincible proofs, 
the examination of the evident truth of revela- 
tion, with the examination of revealed truths, 
as if reason, which has a right to know if 
it is in God that she believes, scio cui 
credidi (II. Tim. i), had an equal right to call 
into question words evidently attested by 
God Himself. What have you done when 
you supposed, with the principal organ 
of rationalism, that " for the believer, faith 
has not to produce titles ?" You have con- 
founded faith and credulity, you have proved 
your entire ignorance of the nature even of an 
act of faith, for this act is the adhesion of the 
reason to the truth attested by God, and re-, 
quires, therefore, that the use of reason pre- 
cede the act of faith, that the light of reason 
precede the light of grace which comes to its 
assistance. What have you done, then, when 



8 4 



A DEFIANCE TO THE 



in the name of reason, of free examination of 
liberty of thought, you have dispensed the 
human mind from the obligation of seeking 
and recognizing the great fact of revelation? 

This is what you have done. In ihe name of 
free examination you have dispensed it from 
opening its eyes to see, in the name of free 
thought you have dispensed it from thinking, 
in the name of reason you have dispensed 
it from the obligation of yielding to the light 
df evidence, which is itself the very law of 
reason. 



III. 

EVIDENCE INDUCES OBLIGATION. 

Of the long chain of the proofs of revelation, 
I have spoken of but one. Of the long chain 
of facts which manifest it to our eyes in all its 
splendor, I have shown you but one, neverthe- 
less this one gives me the right to defy your 
reason to escape from the evidence of the 
proof that it affords. Turn not your head on 
one side, nor turn a deaf ear, but look and 
listen again. 

Is it not evident that Christ in affirming His 
divinity* has proved it by two witnesses who 

* Consult pp. 29-31, and if you wish to add other texts 
to the decisive ones there cited, read the first part of the 
work we have published on the Divinity of Jesus Christ. 
There you will. see the divine affirmations of Chrisc, 
regarding His own person,, collected together. 



REASON OF A RATIONALIST. 85 



belong to God alone, and whose testimony He 
alone could have invoked, the past and the 
future ? Is it not evident that he has proved 
His divinity by the past, in showing it to us 
full of Him, in making it write, many centuries 
in advance, the whole history of the redemp- 
tion ? This is what the Eternal alone can do, 
He who is, who was, and who ever will be. Is it 
not evident that He has proved His divinity 
in the future by giving orders wondrous in 
themselves, and still more wondrous in their 
accomplishment ? 

Is it not evident that these two facts " more 
evident," to use the words of Bossuet, " than 
the light of the sun, make us see our religion 
as ancient as the world," and prove also that 
she is "the work of Him who, holding all in 
His hand, was alone able to begin and continue 
a design, in which all ages are comprised ?" 

Is it not evident that if we do not see in 
the Christian religion, in that society which 
embraces all ages, " a design always followed 
out, the same order of God's counsels, who 
prepares in the beginning of the world what 
He accomplishes at the end of time, and who 
in different states, but with an ever-constant 
succession, perpetuates before the eyes of the 
universe, the holy society in which He wills 
to be served, we merit to see nothing at all ?" 

Is it not evident that in making a comparison 
between those who are called great men, 
although they have never occupied but a short 
time in the ages past, or one epoch of history, 



86 



A DEFIANCE TO THE 



and Him who is manifestly the link of cen- 
turies and the centre of human history; that 
in likening men conquered by time to Him 
who alone has conquered time and made it 
serve His own glory, we render ourselves guilty 
not only of high treason against God, but of 
treason against our own human reason ? 

Is it not evident that in pretending to con- 
found religion^ this fact which reigns over 
all ages, with the religions of the different ages 
of the world, with idolatry which disfigured 
the primitive revelation, with Judaism which 
disfigured the Mosaic revelation which was 
full of the expectations of the Desired of 
Nations; with Islamism, which in its turn broke 
the unity of ages by the negation of the 
redemption, that centre and culminating 
point of the two streams of history, in fine 
with sects of every kind, which the eternal 
religion sees born and die at her feet, is to 
pretend to confound what is manifestly from 
God with what is manifestly from man ? 

But if all this is not evident to you, ought 
you not at least to say why it is not evident ? 

If it is not evident to you that it is only He 
who holds all things in his hand, that can be- 
gin and conduct a design in which all ages 
are comprised, you must tell me how any 
other than God can render himself master of 
all time, and at the same time dispose of the 
past and the future as Jesus Christ did ? 
But this is what I defy you to tell me. 

If it is not evident to you that in refusing 



REASON OF A RATIONALIST. 



8 7 



to see a design always followed up, one and 
the same order in the counsels of God, in His 
ever-constant succession of the true religion 
through all ages, you merit to see nothing any 
more; you are bound to tell me what is want- 
ing to the clearness of this fact which has 
no equal, and that you should show me its 
equal upon earth. But it is this that I defy 
you to do. 

Do not say that Bossuet, whose words I 
have quoted, was only a great man, whose 
ideas have been replaced by those of our 
days. There is no mere question of ideas, 
but of facts, and of facts which the genius 
of Bossuet has affirmed without adding 
anything to them, just as the Fathers, the 
Doctors, the Apologists, and the simple faithful 
themselves have affirmed them, and as you 
could do yourself. Moreover, those who 
speak of Bossuet as a genius of another age, 
as a great mind whose days are past, do not 
know what they are saying. 

The tongue which consecrates itself to the 
glory of the truth, justly participates in this 
immortal glory, and does not pass away with 
time. The most learned orator of our age 
has lately afforded a proof of this when he 
said to the first assembly of his country: " I 
do not think that the nation that has produced 
Descartes and Bossuet is unworthy of liberty/* 
M. Thiers could not find in the whole history 
of France two names more full of light, than 
these two names full of faith. 



88 



A DEFIANCE TO THE 



■ Do not tell me that the faith of Descartes and 
Bossuet was their opinion, their way of looking 
at things, but it is not mine. Do not say this, 
for your reason has not the right to call that 
doubtful which has been proved, and to dismiss 
as a mere opinion what is fully certain. Reason 
is free to do this, since we can abuse our 
reason, but reason has no right against evi- 
dence, which is the very law of reason. 

Do not say to me, in fine: Descartes and 
Bossuet thought thus, but Voltaire thought 
otherwise; the former thought in one way, the 
latter in another. This is not the case; it is 
not true that Voltaire saw as false what Bos- 
suet, Descartes and all other apologists have 
seen and proved to be true. Voltaire indeed 
may not have seen what he did not wish to 
look at, or rather what he only looked at with 
the fear lest he should see, as we shall presently 
show, but Voltaire never tried, and no one 
ever will try, to prove that any other than God 
could predict and accomplish a design in 
which all ages are comprised. 

What is clear in one age, therefore, is clear 
at all times. Human reason is the same at all 
epochs of her history, and no one has the right 
to escape from its conclusions by mere phrases 
and sonorous words. The word ^progress and 
civilization^ express, no doubt, what is very 
beautiful and good, for those at least who 
understand what they mean; but it is just 
those who know what these words mean who 
know also that they will never prevent two 
and two from making four, for every one. 



WHAT IS EVIDENT. 



CHAPTER III. 

Why many people do not see what is evident, and 
how what is clear for the Wise is also clear 
for the Simple. 

I. 

WHY PEOPLE DO NOT SEE WHAT IS EVIDENT. 

If religious truth is so evident, you will 
say to me, there would be as little difference 
of opinion in matters of faith as there is in 
the exact sciences. 

I could content myself with answering you in 
the words of Pascal, who was as great a mathe- 
matician as he was a profound philosopher, that 
in the sphere of the exact sciences, as in any 
other, nothing is more easy than to make unan- 
swerable objections against truths that have 
been proved, and that without doubt volumes 
would have been published against more than 
one mathematical axiom if the passions had had 
any interest in writing them. But I do not 
wish to satisfy myself with this general answer. 
I wish to enter into more details on this subject, 
and to show you that if religious truth does 
not shine with the same brilliancy for every 
one, it is not from any cause that takes away 



9 o 



WHY PEOPLE DO NOT SEE 



its light, but that these causes may be reduced 
to one of the three following: 

The first cause, that prevents a great many 
men from seeing the truth, is that they only 
look at it from their own point of view, or that 
they hardly look at it at all. 

The second cause is that, far from desiring 
the sight of the truth, men fear even to come 
across it, and if they cannot help this some- 
times, they look at the truth with an evil eye, and 
put themselves in an evidently false position, 
in order not to see the truth as it really is. 

The third cause is that they are ignorant of 
the truth, often through no fault of their own, 
because other very wicked persons have hid- 
den it from them. 

i. — Those who do not look at all, or hardly 
do so, are the indifferent. They are short- 
sighted men, whose attention is entirely ab- 
sorbed in the things of this world. The 
thought of death having hardly ever occur- 
red to their minds, the thought of a future 
life preoccupies them but little. They have 
therefore no real desire to know what awaits 
them beyond the grave; they never raise their 
eyes on high, whence the light descends on our 
eternal destiny. How many business men, 
scientific men, statesmen, men devoted to 
labor or pleasure, military men, writers or 
lawyers, ever seriously think during nearly 
the whole course of their life of anything but 
the affairs of the journey, without thinking of 
the end, without practising the golden rule of 



WHAT IS EVIDENT. 



91 



the wise man, " Look to the end ? M This is 
no doubt a blind indifference, and yet it ex- 
ists: we meet it every day, and too often we 
see these men awake from this heavy sleep 
only when they are struck with some misfor- 
tune, or have to suffer some pain mercifully 
allowed them by Divine Providence. For this 
it is necessary that old age or sickness come 
to warn them of the approach of death, or that 
the teachery of the world teaches them that 
all is vanity on the earth. If they consent 
then to look further and higher, if they do not 
resist the grace of prayer, which always tends 
to elevate the soul of man in the hour of 
trial, they will soon enjoy that light which 
nevers fails to enlighten the eyes of those who 
seek it. 

Far sooner would they enjoy this light if they 
did not wait till trials make them think of their 
last end. He who guides a vessel places him- 
self at the stern and holds the rudder. In 
like manner he who would guide his life in 
the right track ought to place himself as it 
were at the end of his life, as it is only from 
there he can guide it as he should. It is from 
there that he sees that all is fleeting, that he 
must know whither he is going, and that he 
begins to seek after religious certainty with 
the sincerity that always finds it. 

In this sense, without doubt, the first con- 
dition (removens prohibens) for an efficacious 
demonstration of the faith is to make him 
whom we would convince start from the * 
thought of death. 



92 WHY PEOPLE DO NOT SEE 



II. — But some men are more than indiff- 
erent — they are those who fear to see the 
truth. 

Far from desiring any certain knowledge of 
their last end, they fear to know the truth on 
this matter. Far from aspiring here on earth 
for certainty, they only aspire to doubt. Far 
from seeking light, they seek darkness, because 
knowing that they are not in the right they do not 
wish to enter on it, and they feel the light, which 
troubles them and judges them. — (St. John iii. 19) 
Thus in the end they are left by the justice of 
God in the darkness they love. 

Are they not clearly unreasonable, when 
they speak of religion as a matter about which 
the mind of man never loses the right to 
doubt, as of a kind of knowledge in which 
there is no certitude ? Is this reasonable ? 
Is it reasonable to say that the gift of reason, 
which is especially bestowed upon us in order 
that we may perform all our actions, even the 
most trivial, with a view to a certain end or 
for a lawful purpose, is condemned never to 
know the end for which life was given to us ? 
Is this not to say that reason, which is given 
to us to be our guide in all things, is given to 
us in vain, obliged as we are to live without 
knowing for what we live ? Is it reasonable 
to suppose that during sixty centuries and 
more, man has not known either whence he 
comes or whither he is to go, and that God 
has not taken the pains to instruct him on 
* this matter ? 



WHAT IS EVIDENT. 



93 



To deny certainty with regard to our last 
end, or religion, is therefore to deny God and 
reason itself. That God abandons the physi- 
cal world to the disputes of men, this I can 
well understand, because the world goes on 
without us, without suffering from our errors, 
as you well know. But the moral world is 
ourselves, and to follow its laws it must know 
them with certitude. 

Nevertheless, if human reason teaches man 
that he has a right to know certainly his laws 
and his last end, the same reason teaches him 
his incapability of obtaining this necessary 
certitude by his own efforts, and the need 
which he has of the light of God. 

The greatest minds of every age and of 
every people have acknowledged this, with 
one accord. 

But it is not absolutely necessary to have re- 
course to the history of the human mind, in 
order to know the demands of reason. For 
this it suffices that each one of us should in- 
terrogate himself sincerely and answer with 
candor. No one can call into doubt, in fact, 
that if every man desires to know whither 
he is going, and if reason itself demands this, 
the torch of this reason sheds but a feeble 
light into the abyss of a future life, and that 
reason only illumines with a pale light the 
thick darkness which overspreads the path 
which leads thither. Tell me, then, you who 
read, do you see very clear beyond the grave? 
Can you explain the mystery of the future 



94 



WHY PEOPLE DO NOT SEE 



life? do you know the answer to that of the 
present? do you know the cause of moral evil 
and its remedy ? Can you tell me why this 
life is a battle, and what arms are given us to 
conquer? In presence of the ineffable har- 
monies of nature, in which the power, the 
wisdom and love of the Creator are mani- 
fested, can you tell me why man, the king of 
creation, is out of harmony? why in his ar- 
dent longing after happiness, he constantly 
encounters troubles, and deceits, and how he 
can still hope, when, conquered at last, he 
falls into the grave ? Confess frankly that 
reason desires to know this, but sees clearly 
its ignorance. 

And is it not this reason, which bids us be- 
lieve our senses for sensible objects, the tes- 
timony of our conscience for what is interior, 
the testimony of history for what is past, the 
testimony of eye-witnesses for what is removed 
from our sight, is it not this reason, I say, that 
yearns for the testimony of God on the 
mysteries of life and death, on what is future, 
invisible and divine; in fine, on God Himself? 
And is not reason reasonable in desiring to 
hear the testimony of eternity on eternal 
.things and on the mysteries of eternity? Is 
not reason right in its incapability to know by 
its own unassisted efforts, its rule and last 
end with certitude, to ask this from the word 
of God, and to cling to this with faith? — (St. 
Thomas, 2, 2, q. 2.) A man therefore is 
truly reasonable when he acknowledges the 



WHAT IS EVIDENT. 



95 



need which he has to possess, in religious 
matters, the certitude which reason shows to 
be indispensable, when he avows the necessity 
of the testimony of God in divine things (St. 
Thomas, 2, 2, q. 2.), in order to be instructed 
by His word (Ibid.) about the last end of 
man. On the contrary, is he not unreasonable 
when he denies certitude in religious matters, 
or when he seeks it not where the wise men 
of every people, and the sincere consciences 
of every age have sought it, namely, in faith 
in the'testimony of God. 

Again, is not a man unreasonable who treats 
religion, that living link of souls among them- 
selves and with God, that essentially social 
fact, as a mere idea, as a dream, as an opinion 
swayed by the wind of doubt, and a question 
that has never been resolved ? Is not this a 
want of sincerity and good faith ? Is not 
this to resist the voice of common sense, which 
proclaims to us: religion is not and cannot be 
a problem, since it must be the light of all; 
it cannot be something yet to be made, since 
it is necessarily contemporary with our nature, 
the first man having need to know his destiny, 
as well as the last, it cannot be a secret known 
to a privileged few, but a blessing common to 
all the children of God, the great inheritance 
of the human race, the soul of the great 
society of people throughout all ages, the 
most clearly divine work of the moral world. 
If therefore you wish to know where is the 
true religion, do not close your eyes to dream, 



9 6 



WHY PEOPLE DO NOT SEE 



but open them to gaze around you, to see 
on what religious society is manifestly im- 
pressed the hand of Him who never changes — 
the hand of the God of all ages and of all 
men. If you wish to hear divine truth, do not 
stop your ears to consult only yourself, but 
rather listen attentively to the voices which 
speak to the world in the name of God, to 
recognize that whose tone cannot be imitated, 
and whose power is unparalleled. If you re- 
fuse to do this it is a sign that you are 
afraid so see or to hear. 

* Now it is because you are afraid that you 
are not only unreasonable, but that you give 
way to a pride, which I do not fear to call the 
pride of a madman. Is it not the height of folly 
to imagine, as you and your masters do, that 
religious truth, the truth regarding the duties, 
the end of man, and the very destiny of 
humanity, will come forth to-day from your 
thoughts, will flow to-day from your brains, as 
if it has been wanting to all generations up to 
this, the generation which is fortunate enough 
not to have been born before you. It is as 
ridiculous to say that the human mind must 
produce truth, as to say that the eye must 
create light. No doubt man can and should 
grow in the science of the truth, as he can 
and ought to grow in the practice of this 
truth, and in the accomplishment of the law, 
but this twofold progress of the mind and of 
the life of man, does not the less suppose the 
certain existence ofthe law of reason and of 



WHAT IS EVIDENT. 



97 



life. We repeat, fully to enjoy light here be- 
low, the eye must seek it outside of itself 
and from above. It has, without doubt, the 
torch of reason to enlighten it, but it is by 
means of the very flames of this torch, it is by 
means of this very light that it sees clearly 
that it has need of a brighter light, the light 
of the day, in order to penetrate the heavens, 
to know with certainty final and divine truths. 
Pride, resisting this law, fails to see what is 
clear to every reasonable man, the need which 
we have of the testimony of God, on the in- 
visible future, and the evident existence of 
this testimony in the great fact of the revela- 
tion which binds together and is prominent 
among all ages. It is because it resists the 
laws and " kicks against the goad" (Acts ix: 
5) of conscience, that pride will not and even 
cannot believe just because it is pride, and 
wills to be so, and hence becomes falsehood. 
Yes, falsehood, because it refuses to glorify 
the truth, by acknowledging that man has not 
made it, and pretends itself to the vain and 
foolish glory of having made the truth itself. 
Hence did our Blessed Lord reprove the 
proud of all ages, saying: " How can you be- 
lieve, who receive glory from one another, 
and the glory which is from God alone you 
do not seek." — (St. John, v. 44.) Let us aband- 
on, then, the false stand-point of pride, and ac- 
knowledge the law, which is written every- 
where by facts, and in virtue of which light 



98 WHY PEOPLE DO NOT SEE 



descends as life does from the Father of all 
life and of all light (St. James i. 17), from him 
from whom is 'derived, step by step, all paternity 
(Ephes. iii. 15) on earth. Let us recognize, 
1 say, this great law which is unknown to the 
false science which deceives you, to that 
science which dares to call itself the philoso- 
phy of nature, while shutting its eyes to the 
manifest law of nature. It is this so-called 
philosophy which substitutes for the true law 
the imaginary law, or rather the dream of an 
original chaos, which it considers as a kind of 
primitive egg, the germ of which, unconscious 
of its own energy, develops itself blindly and 
gradually until it becomes God! On condition, 
however, of being so only in the mind and 
conscience of man. The comparison of the 
egg belongs especially to this philosophy of 
Hegel, which now-a-days has become French,* 
and furnishes common sense with the best 
possible occasion of seeing how shallow is 
this science which has too long been consid- 
ered profound. 

It is evident, indeed, that both in the physi- 
cal as well as in the moral world, the per- 
fect precedes the imperfect, that which actually 
exists or is developed precedes what may 
exist or has to be developed. It is evident 

^Become French for its own misfortune. The French 
mind does hot like to lose itself in mere clouds; it can- 
not be satisfied with ill-defined formulas, it wishes 
to understand what is said. 



WHAT IS EVIDENT. 



99 



that it was not from the first egg that the 
first fowl came, but that it was the first fowl 
that laid the first egg. And why is this evi- 
dent? Because on coming out of the shell, it 
is necessary for the chicken to have the pro- 
tecting wings of its mother to warm and 
cherish it. It is evident again that it is not 
the infant who is the original principle of 
man, but that it is the man who is the prin- 
ciple of the infant, that it is the parents who 
have given life to the first child who saw the 
light of day, because the child, on seeing the 
light of day, has need of the breasts and the 
smile of its mother, because it has need of 
its parents not only to be nourished but to be 
brought up. It is evident, therefore, that the 
father of the human race was a grown man, 
that our first parents were formed by the 
hand of the master and of the father, by the cre- 
ating and divine hand. Reason tells us this 
as well as the Book of Genesis; it is the man- 
ifest law of nature that the perfect produces 
the imperfect, and that the former aids the 
latter to attain the perfection to which it is 
destined. Here is the true law of progress. 
Progress is the advance towards perfection. 
Perfection for each being consists solely in 
the attainment of its end, and it is the prin- 
ciple that directs the way to the end, it is the 
perfect that conducts the imperfect to perfec- 
tion. Consider the links in the chain of all 
human facts, and you will see that you must 



IOO 



WHY PEOPLE DO NOT SEE 



necessarily go from being to being, from life to 
life, until you reach the living and infinitely 
perfect God, unless you wish to reason back- 
wards, unless you wish to go against reason 
while pretending to give reasons. All this 
great chain of facts cries out with a loud 
voice: It is not, it cannot be chaos which has 
begotten intelligence, but intelligence that 
has brought forth order from chaos; be- 
ing has not come from nothingness, but it is 
being, the being by essence, that has drawn all 
things from nothing, not from nothing as 
their cause, but from their own nothingness 
peculiar to them, since of themselves, they are 
not, and they have received from God not 
only all they have but all that they are. 

Let us now regard this great law from the 
point of view in which it regards us. 

We have just seen that it is evident that the 
first child must necessarily have had parents 
formed by the hand of the master and of the fa- 
ther, by the creating and divine hand. In 
virtue of the natural and divine law, man is 
born through society, because he is born 
through marriage. Man also lives through so- 
ciety, since after birth he would die, if he 
were not received, nourished and brought up 
by the authors of his being. He is born there- 
fore depending on the authority* of him who 
gave him life, not in the sense that he must 



*The word authority is derived from author. 



WHAT IS EVIDENT. 



101 



live for it, without its living for him, as if the 
natural and divine right of the child should 
not regulate the use of domestic authority, 
but in the sense that man has need of author- 
ity to preserve the life which he has received 
and to reach by its assistance his physical and 
moral maturity. The social man, the citizen, 
is born in a certain way to civil life by 
the action of public authority, not in the sense 
that this authority is itself the source of his 
rights, but because he has need of authority 
to enjoy and exercise his rights. Society, 
without doubt, is not made for authority, or 
for the state, as the paganism of the Caesars 
seemed to think; on the contrary, authority is 
made for society, as society is for man, and 
man for God, in whom he finds his end and 
happiness; nevertheless, it is true that author- 
ity constitutes one of the essential conditions 
of society, and that the citizen must live in 
its dependence. Must it not be the same, and 
with greater reason, in the order of religious 
life ? I say with greater reason, for if man 
only participates in the life of the family and 
in the civil life on condition of submission to 
the authorities of each, and only attains to the 
end of these two societies, the peace we can 
enjoy in this world, on condition of obeying 
their laws, how will he participate in the spir- 
itual life which directs him to his last end, 
without being submissive to the religious au- 
thority, which directs man by the divine law, 
to his last end ? We must well understand 



102 



WHY PEOPLE DO NOT SEE 



that the liberty of man encounters law and 
authority everywhere, and that for him they 
are the conditions of life in the three societies 
to which he belongs by virtue of his nature and 
positive destiny. Moreover, we should un- 
derstand well that if authority cannot be a 
mere question in domestic or civil society 
neither can it be in religious society. If in 
the two first a man were to seek the law, that 
is to say the truth, in himself, and not seek it 
from authority, and only obey the laws he 
has made himself, he would reverse the order 
of reason and common sense; not the less is 
the order of reason and common sense re- 
versed by him who seeks the knowledge of 
religious truth in himself, without having re- 
course to the authority which is necessarily 
charged with its promulgation and mainten- 
ance. Without doubt in the family as well 
as in the State and the Church, it is reason 
that recognizes authority, and this is its right 
and duty; but because authority must mani- 
fest itself to the intelligence, is this a cause 
for the latter to declare itself independent ? 
Is it because we acknowledge the judiciary 
authority that we have the right to declare 
ourselves independent of its tribunals, and 
refuse to submit ourselves to its decisions ? 
It is to the reason, therefore, that the religious 
authority is manifested, and it is by its di- 
vine character that it makes itself acknowl- 
edged as a divine authority, but it is pre- 
cisely in order to acknowledge this author- 



WHAT IS EVIDENT. 



103 



ity that God has given us reason, and not that 
reason should be independent of it. It is 
true, and we wish to repeat it, that man and 
society should grow (or progress, as is said 
now) in the science of the divine law, and 
observe it ever more perfectly; but it is not 
less evident, that whoever pretends to find 
the law outside the religious society and the 
authority which governs it, reverses the order 
of reason, and only gives another proof of 
a pride in full revolt against the nature of 
things, and against the order manifestly es- 
tablished by Providence. 

in. Must we say then that all authorities es- 
tablished by God have always remained faith- 
ful, and that none of them have failed in their 
duty? No, indeed, for it is just when one or 
other among them has betrayed its duty, in 
troubling the harmony divinely established 
among the three authorities, that error has de- 
ceived men by coming to them by the channel 
of truth. I mean to say, by the road on which 
they had a right to expect to meet truth. Is 
it not true, that, in the designs of God, edu- 
cation has for its object to raise man, and to 
raise him especially by the knowledge and 
practice of virtue ? Is it not evident that 
education is the principal providential condi- 
tion of the regular development of the moral 
man? Man, therefore, has the right to re- 
ceive truth through education, a right which 
corresponds to the duty of those who have to 
rear and instruct him. Those whose duty it 



104 WHY PEOPLE DO NOT SEE 

is to instruct, will have to render a rigorous 
account to God, since experience teaches us 
every day that a good or a bad education 
forms or deforms materially the conscience 
of man. We are far from pretending that a 
false education can extinguish altogether the 
light of reason, and take away from man all 
moral responsibility. This would be a great 
error; but we affirm, what no one can 
deny, that education exercises a great influ- 
ence over reason and conscience, and we say, 
that the responsibility of each man is in pro- 
portion to the degree of light which illumines 
his reason, and his conscience, provided his 
ignorance be neither directly or indirectly 
voluntary. We say, therefore, that God will 
demand an account of the error transmitted 
by education. He will not ask it so much froni 
those who are deceived, as from those who 
deceive. We say that the great culprits are 
those who first troubled the course of the di- 
vine stream of truth. 

We shall understand this truth better if we 
cast a glance on the assemblage of historical 
facts that have reference to it; for history 
demonstrates that the first culprits were not 
ordinarily the depositaries of domestic, but cf 
public authority. 

Parents, as a rule, love their children too 
much to deceive them willingly, but the su- 
preme power, that which disposes of the 
strength of a people, is always exposed to a 
supreme temptation against the truth. And 



WHAT IS EVIDENT. 



why is this ? It is because truth limits power; 
"Art thou a king ?" asked Pilate of Jesus Christ. 
"Yes, I am," Jesus Christ answered to Pilate, 
" But my kingdom is not of this world, in 
which I have come, that I should give testimony 
to the truth. 93 — (John, xviii. 36, 37.) 

But how is Christ then a king? Because 
he came to found in this world the kingdom 
of truth which is not of this world; because 
he came to make truth reign over mere force. 
Hence the impatience of the powers of the 
earth in presence of this importunate 'truth. 
Hence the difficulty with which the temporal 
power suffers, as a rule, the spiritual power, 
or the teaching power of the great Christian 
society. This is so because the latter, dis- 
armed as it is, remains faithful, when all other 
resistances are fatigued and conquered, be- 
cause it never cedes any of the rights of truth 
or of justice, and can always say to force: 
"Hitherto thou shalt come, and shalt go no 
farther." — (Job. xxxviii. 11.) 

We do not deny that certain religious 
authorities have sometimes yielded to force 
or cunning, for it is from this very weakness 
that have come forth all national religions, 
and hence evidently false religions, because 
divine truth is essentially universal. 

These religions, by becoming national, that 
is to say, dependent on national power, have 
corrupted religion. It is by breaking the 
unity with the traditional authority, that in all 
ages of the world religious error has been 



10(5 WHY PEOPLE DO NOT SEE 

born under the protection of the political 
powers of this earth. It is by breaking the 
chain of unity, with primitive revelation 
and patriarchal authority, that idolatry was 
born under the protection of the armed chiefs 
of the first peoples. The masters of rival 
nations did not wish any longed-for union 
with each other, not even religious union, and 
in place of the worship of God the Creator, 
the Father of the whole human family, they sub- 
stituted the worship of national gods, divided 
among themselves as mortals are. It is then 
that God comes to the assistance of forsaken 
truth, by replacing the patriarchal authority 
by a more imposing one, whose voice could 
be heard by the national infidel powers. He 
raised, therefore, in the midst of the great 
empires, in the centre of the great nations, 
the living monument of a whole people, which 
he called his own. 

The patriarchal authority was charged to lay 
the foundation of this monument, by the 
hands of the Father of believers, and the 
Mosaic authority was charged to complete the 
edifice. 

In their constitution, in their laws, even in 
their very history, the people of God were a 
people who recalled the past, and a prophetic 
people, a real monument raised to the memory 
of primitive revelation, of the creation, of 
the fall, of the redemption promised and ex- 
pected. Thus God caused all the great 



WHAT IS EVIDENT. 



ioy 



nations to pass by the feet of this great 
monument. The Egyptians, the Assyrians, 
the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, took 
possession in turn of Judea, and all heard 
these, the great voices of the past and the 
future, the truth of the original state of man 
and of the promises made, of the creation and 
of the redemption. We see also these great 
nations receive or bring to them this missionary 
nation of eternal truth, and we hear more than 
once the masters of the nations which suc- 
cessively ruled the world, confess, following 
the example of the little central people, the 
one true God of their fathers. It is thus that 
the Mosaic revelation worked a general good. 
The religion of Moses was national only as 
regards its politics, ceremonial and judicial 
proceedings. By its dogmas and moral law 
it was only the primitive and universal law 
purified from the stains of idolatry, for it was 
not only the natural moral law that preceded 
the Mosaic law, but also the supernatural law 
with faith in the future redemption, a law 
manifestly shown by the universality of expi- 
atory sacrifices, profaned later on by pagan- 
ism. Nevertheless the fidelity of some of the 
masters of the nations, to this general bless- 
ing, was but passing, and the powers con- 
tinued, as they did after the rise of idolatry, 
to resist the truth. 

Providence still persisted. It responded to 
the ingratitude of the world by the Christian 



io8 



WHY PEOPLE DO NOT SEE 



revelation, the third and last phase of the only 
revelation which fills every age. The author- 
ity of the Mosaic law only paled in presence 
of Him whom she expected, and who replaced 
her, as the prophets had announced, by the 
Catholic authority, by the power founded on 
these words: " Teach all nations. I am with 
you all days even to the consummation of the 
world." — (Matt, xxviii. 20.) 

Since that time the spiritual empire was alone 
universal, and error was no longer master of 
the world. Error, it is true, did not continue 
with less ardor the great conflict which will 
only cease with the liberty of man in due 
time, and we still see religions, that is errors 
favored by national powers, spring np from 
their rupture with the religion. Call to mind ' 
the Arianism of the emperors of the East, call 
to mind Islamism, that barbarous Arianism, 
propagated by the sword of the Ottomans, 
call to mind Protestantism everywhere by the 
authority of kings and governments, them- 
selves resting on that principle of national 
religion; cujus regio, illius religio* Call to 
mind, in fine, rationalism, or rather see it at 
work among the people, whose governments 
it directs, and you will find it has the same 
pretension to enforce itself as a national doc- 
trine and only tolerates the true religion on the 
same terms as the sects, that is to say, on 



. * Religion must depend under the government. 



WHAT IS EVIDENT. 



109 



the condition of ceding to every law, no mat- 
ter what it may be. Listen to the voice of 
this last great error, and you will find it re- 
peating everywhere and always: I am willing 
to have forms of worship or religions, of which 
I am the master, but I do not wish for that 
religion whose supreme pontiff has said: "It 
is better to obey God than man." — (Acts, v. 
29.) I do not wish for that religion whose 
non possumus troubles my supreme power. 

You see that it is always at the instigation, 
or under the protection of public authority 
impatient at the yoke of truth, that all re- 
ligious errors have been propagated, and that 
the truth was veiled, hidden and stolen from 
nations. And what is it now-a-days that 
prevents the truth from reaching freely the peo- 
ple of Asia, of China, Japan, Tonquin, and 
so many other populations of Asia and Africa ? 
The temporal power, the empire, the sword. 

What prevents the truth from reaching free- 
ly the people of the East, and especially the 
Musselmen ? The temporal power, the em- 
pire, and the cime'er. 

What prevents it reaching the schismatics 
of Russia? The Czar, the empire, the sword. 

What, again, prevents the truth from pene- 
trating among the sects of the North? The 
temporal power, force, the sword. 

What often prevents the truth from reach- 
ing those souls who live in the midst of Chris- 
tian and Catholic nations, if. not the power of 



no 



WHY PEOPLE DO NOT SEE 



the State, when it takes possession of the in- 
struction of generations, forbidding every 
doctrine that is not official? 

Truth has, indeed, always and everywhere, 
apostles willing to suffer and to die for her; nev- 
ertheless, it is certain that if she remains hid- 
den to the majority of so many nations, it is 
solely through the awful abuse of human 
power, which wills no other forms of worship, 
no other gods, but those which are its servile 
tools. 

The depositaries of power are therefore in 
this case the great culprits. 

But what is the degree of responsibility of 
those who are deceived? We have already 
answered this question. The degree of their 
responsibility corresponds to the light they 
have received. Truth indeed is one; and 
there can be only one true faith, as there is 
only one true God. There can be no salva- 
tion for any one who rejects it, for any one 
who voluntarily lives out of the true religion, 
v Nevertheless, we must acknowledge/* , says 
Pius IX., "most certainly that those who are 
in invincible ignorance with regard to the true 
faith, are not guilty before God. And who 
will have the temerity to mark the limits of 
this ignorance which may depend on the 
character and diversity of peoples, of countries, 
and on so many other circumstances. " — (Al- 
locution, Dec. 9, 1854). 

This temerity, however, exists and we have 



WHAT IS EVIDENT. 



Ill 



heard it said more than once, that invincible 
ignorance and the good faith which accom- 
panies it, can be conceived to exist among in- 
fidel nations, but how can it exist among 
Christian nations ? And if it can exist among 
ignorant people, how can it exist among the 
educated ? These words we heard once ad- 
dressed to a priest who was a stranger, and 
they made him smile. He explained himself by 
saying: "I was a Protestant clergyman, and 
hence had some education; nevertheless, dur- 
ing many years, I had no suspicion of being 
in error. I only knew the Catholic Church, 
the true religion of our fathers, the true 
Christianity, by the lies of my masters. I have 
not lived one minute in bad faith. As soon 
as the light began to dawn on my soul, I fell 
into doubt, and without delay I set to work 
to find, the certitude, which I found in the 
bosom of unity." 

How many young people educated in ra- 
tionalistic families, imbued with anti-christian 
lessons and reading, have only seen the light 
dawn in their souls, but very late in life. On 
the other hand, we must take care not to see 
good faith, where it no longer exists. It is 
difficult, we grant, for it to last long, where the 
truth speaks loudly and resounds on all sides. 

We shall never forget the gratitude of a 
noble English lady towards a priest who had 
the courage to tell her this fact at her own 
table, in not very flattering terms, but in 



112 WHAT IS CLEAR TO THE LEARNED 



words full' of charity. What I relate took 
place in London. The conversation turned on 
the question of good faith, and the principles 
that I have just laid down were announced. 
The lady, who knew enough about Protestant- 
ism, and the Catholic Church to be able to 
compare them conscientiously, adopted with 
great eagerness the maxims which seemed to 
dispense her from making painful sacrifices. 
The priest, of whom we speak, perceived this, 
and said to her with great kindness but clear- 
ly: " Madam, what you say is true in itself, 
but no longer true with regard to you." As 
much as to say: you are no longer in good 
faith. These words remained in her heart, 
and a year had scarcely passed when this lady 
Crossed the sea to thank her former guest, 
whose rude compliment had made her re- 
flect and pray, and thus return to the faith 
of her fathers and to the sacrament of life. 

Good faith in error supposes invincible 
ignorance, and how could ignorance be in- 
vincible in the presence of living, speaking 
and well-known truths ? 

II. 

HOW WHAT IS CLEAR TO THE LEARNED IS ALSO CLEAR 
TO THE SIMPLE. 

Is it enough to be a man of talent, and even 
a learned man, in order to be wise ? No; a 
man is only wise when he makes a good use 



IS CLEAR TO THE SIMPLE. 1 1 3 



of his mind and of his science, that is to say, 
when he uses them to attain his end. But what 
is the true end of man. It is clearly his last 
end. The other lawful objects or ends which 
he ought to seek here on earth, are not and 
cannot be but the means to insure the last 
end, the end of ends. Reason therefore can 
easily understand the definition which the 
Holy Scriptures give of the supreme wisdom 
in which we should participate according to 
our measure. ki Attingit a fine in finem fortiter, 
etdispotiit omnia suaviter ■/' " She reacheth from 
end to end mightily and ordereth all things 
sweetly." — (Wisdom, viii. 1.) 

Now the doctrine or science of the last end 
and of the means to attain it, is called religion. 

It is needful therefore to know with cer- 
tainty the true doctrine about the true way of 
the true end of man, in order to make good 
use of all other sciences, or, in other words, 
to be wise. 

' But before showing you that the unlearned 
possess this certainty, as well as the learned, 
and therefore that the former can be as truly 
wise as the latter, I wish to take an account 
with you of what we have already proved, 
and to sum it up in a few propositions closely 
united together. 
This is the first: 

Certainty about religion must necessarily exist 
for the human mind, and it is evident that to 
deny this certainty, is not only to deny God, but 
to deny reason itself. 



114 WHAT IS CLEAR TO THE LEARNED 



We have already* proved this truth, and a 
great orator, f formerly somewhat sceptical, but 
since enlightened by age and reflection, saw it, 
and most justly remarked, when speaking be- 
fore the legislative chamber of France, that 
doubt in religious matters was the shipwreck 
of human reason. 

The second proposition is as follows: 

To arrive at certainty in matters of religion, 
the human mind has always demanded, still de- 
mands, and will ever demand, the testimony of 
God, or the teaching of revelation. It is clear 
that it is right in demanding this. 

You have already seen the reason of this. J 
when I satisfied myself with proving the 
evidence of this fact, by citing the explicit 
avowals of the great men of all ages and 
nations who with one accord have acknowl- 
edged it. M. de Sacy, in the "Journal des 
Deoats," lately recalled this fact to M. Salva- 
dor when he wrote to him: " Religion never 
came forth from philosophy." This cannot be 
called in question. Always and everywhere, 
man has desired to hear God, about God, and 
divine things. When man refused to hear God, 
and when he refused to listen to the word of God 
he has given ear to the oracles of God,% so true 

*Pp. 92-93. fM. Thiers. % Pp. 94-95. 

§ "All the gods of the nations are devils," says the 
Psalmist. St. Paul also says that those who refuse to 
believe in the Spirit of God will believe in the spuits 
of error; spiritibus erroris. The founders of false re- 



IS CLEAR TO THE SIMPLE. 



1 T S 



is it, that in religious matters the human mind 
cannot accept what does not come from a 
source raised above itself. Far from denying 
the supernatural, we see that man has constantly 
called out for it, and the genius of Plato, as 
well as the common sense of the poor, desire 
that some one should come from the other 
world to teach us what is going on there. 

The third proposition is this: Human rea- 
son has never separated revelation from the 
divine teaching authority which perpetuates it, 
and reason is right in never separating these 
two facts which are necessarily united. Here 
there is a fact and a right. The fact is self- 
evident, religion and priesthood are holy 
things which are co-relative always and every- 
where. We have already proved the right in 
showing what it ought to be.* 

We will only add a few words to what we 
have already said. Of what use would be 
legislators and laws if the codes of laws were 
abandoned to themselves, without the judicial 
authority which necessarily corresponds to 
them? What would it avail, if God had given 
the law of the last end to religious society, if 
He had abandoned this divine code of our 

ligions did not believe in themselves, as did the founders 
of philosophical schools. No, they were deceived by the 
revelations of superior but fallen spirits. This has been 
the chastisement of their revolt against God and against 
unity in revelation. 

*P IOO 



Il6 WHAT IS CLEAR TO THE LEARNED 

destiny to itself. That He has abandoned the 
material world and its laws to the disputes and 
researches of the learned can be easily under- 
stood, because this world goes on without us, 
and without suffering from our ignorance, 
obeying necessarily its own laws under the 
impulsion of the Almighty, but that God 
should have abandoned to itself the law of 
the spiritual world, the law of souls called to 
accomplish it freely, without giving it an or- 
gan that corresponds to it, and an authority 
that keeps it and explains it, this is what can- 
not be conceived, it being impossible that 
God should be less wise than the legislators 
of this world. Hence it is that the religious 
history of all ages protests loudly against this 
dream. 

The fourth and last proposition is that:. 
The divine teaching authority does not wait 
to be sought after by the human mind, but 
that it comes to the mind first itself, gives 
evident proofs of itself, and hence of the di- 
vine revelation which it guards and perpetu- 
ates. 

By the simple enunciation of this last 
proposition, you see that if proved true it 
resolves by itself and at once the whole re- 
ligious question. Hence I have only given 
the other three propositions to make you 
judge from the stand-point of reason of 
which we have already spoken*, and to pre-. 

* V. ioo, and the following pages. 



IS CLEAR TO THE SIMPLE. 117 

vent your abandoning this, as so many un- 
fortunately do, who fear to see too clearly. 
We must now, therefore, prove this last propo- 
sition which is a most important and decisive 
one. It will make us understand that what is 
evident to the eyes of the learned, is also evi- 
dent to the eyes of the ignorant. 

But have we not proved this already? That 
the religion of the Scriptures is revealed by 
God, that it is evidently proved to be di- 
vine by the very fact of the authority of the 
Church, which guards and perpetuates it — is 
not this the thesis that I have been maintain- 
ing, and which I terminated by defying your 
reason to refute it ?* 

It only remains for me, therefore, to show 
you how Providence has put this thesis within 
the reach of all, and how it can easily be un- 
derstood by all. 

To prove this thesis, we must strip it of 
the character of a problem to be resolved by 
study and give it the character of a living 
answer to the great question of our souls, the 
character of a living doctrine, which presses 
itself on our attention. 

We have already seen that all religion, true 
or false, is inseparable from the authority 
which gives it life. What we advance here is 
that the authority which perpetuates the true 
religion, besides being the only one that proves 



* Ch. ii., § II. and § III. 



Xl8 WHAT IS CLEAR TO THE LEARNED 



its divinity to reason, is the only one that 
gives this proof to reason bv asking of it two, 
conditions — to hear what it has to say, and to 
look at what it shows. What we affirm is that 
the authority which perpetuates Christianity 
in the world is the Catholic Church, saying 
to human reason: " Hearken, O daughter, and 
see." — (Ps. xliv. n.) Listen to what I say to 
you, and look at what I show you, and at what 
I am. In doing this the Catholic Church 
gives to reason such a peremptory proof of 
the divinity of the Christian revelation and 
of its own mission, that reason, in order to 
verify this proof, has no need to have recourse 
to any other sources than to the testimony 
which she hears and the fact which she re- 
gards. What we affirm here is that Jesus 
Christ having said: If you will not believe my 
word believe my works, for it is they that 
render testimony of me. The Church has 
manifestly the divine right to say: Believe the 
testimony I render to Jesus Christ, for I am 
the greatest of his works. In fine we affirm 
that the light of reason, such as is possessed 
not only by the learned, but by all men, suf- 
fices to any one who looks at and hears the 
Church to make them recognize in her with 
certitude the divine leading authority on 
earth. We say that the meeting of reason 
with the divine teaching authority, a meeting 
which occurs, always, everywhere, and to all,* 



*Pp, 104-107. 



IS CLEAR TO THE SIMPLE. 



II 9 



we say that this simple meeting suffices for 
reason to recognize the divine authority, 
and that with certainty, provided that it re- 
gards and listens attentively. 

And why is it sufficient for reason to look ? 

Because the facts that this authority shows, 
facts which constitute its proper characteris- 
tics, are well-known, avowed, actually exist- 
ing and fully demonstrative of its divine ori- 
gin, and of its divine institution.* 

Is not this what we have already seen con- 
cerning its unity which has existed in all ages ? 
Do not say that in order to prove this, it has 
been necessary to do what all cannot do; 
namely, to devote one's self to biblical studies; 
for it is false to say that the study of the Bible 
is necessary to arrive at full certainty about 
the great facts which are more clear than the 
light of the sun, which show forth our re- 
ligion as ancient as the world, and which Bossuet 
proves in these words: "To be expected, to 
come, and to be recognized by a posterity, 
which lasts as long as the world, is the charac- 
ter of the Messias in whom we believe; Jesus 
Christ was yesterday, is to-day, and is till the 
end of ages." — Must we have recourse to his- 
torical studies, properly so called, to critical re- 
searches to know with certainty what was the 

. * We have shown the theological bearing of this 
truth in our ^'Lettres theologique" (lere lettre) and in 
"Le Pontificat de Pie IX. et les erreurs contemporaines" 
But this does not regard you, as you do not as yet be- 
lieve. 



120 



WHAT IS CLEAR TO THE LEARNED 



series of great empires up to the time of 
Christ, and that there have existed towns 
called Babylon, Niniveh, Susa, Sparta, Athens 
and Rome ? No, because study is not the 
less superfluous to give us certainty about such 
notorious facts, separated from us by time, than 
it is superfluous to give us certainty about other 
notorious facts, separated from us by space. 
The distance of time and space are equally 
powerless here to shake our certainty; itisas^ 
impossible for good sense to doubt the past 
existence of Niniveh and Babylon as it would 
be to doubt the actual existence of Pekin and, 
Calcutta. Now, the series of these empires 
is less proved than the course of religion 
throughout these empires, and the memorials 
of the first cannot be compared either for an- 
tiquity or clearness to the memorials of the 
second, the biblical memorial of the two; 
testaments, whose splendid harmony shines 
brightly, not only to the eyes of the learned 
but is tangible to the most humble Christian, 
when the Church does for him what Christ did 
for the disciples of Emmaus. When the 
Church makes the Christian touch with his 
hand, as it were, all that is found in the Scrip- 
tures written about himself, and all that is 
found therein written of the Church. It is_ 
therefore true that the simple encounter of" 
the Church with reason suffices here to give 
certainty, for the Church shows us on one side 
the wonderful and ever-existing fact of her 



IS CLEAR TO THE SIMPLE. 121 

unity mistress of all ages, that is to say, of her 
perpetuity, and on the other side, the light of 
reason, such as it exists in the least learned 
of men, suffices for him to see clearly that 
God alone is capable of beginning and con- 
ducting, of conceiving and realizing, of pre- 
dicting and accomplishing a design in which 
all ages are comprised. 

Bat if the mere encounter of reason with 
the living authority of the true religion, 
suffices for the former to make it recognize 
the latter in the supreme unity of time, or in 
the superhuman perpetuity of the faith; if 
the light of reason alone is sufficient for every 
man to make him comprehend the divinity of 
this great fact, reason is also, and with greater" 
reason, sufficient to make him comprehend 
the divinity of another fact which the Church 
likewise shows herself and in herself, the fact 
of unity, mistress of all space, or the fact of 
Catholicity. Yes, reason, in presence of the 
Church is sufficient for man, if he will listen 
to what the Church tells, and look at what she 
shows him, to see with evidence, ist, that 
Catholicity is a living fact; 2d that it belongs 
to the Church alone; 3d, that it is super- 
natural and that God alone can be the author. 

What does the Church affirm when she calls 
herself Catholic ? She affirms that she is a 
doctrinal power of universal expansion; a 
spiritual and social power, independent of 
the empires of the world; which knows no 



122 WHAT IS CLEAR TO THE LEARNED 



boundaries, which sends apostles to all nations, 
who confirm when needful their doctrine by 
the testimony of their blood; that its uni- 
versality is grounded on the centre of unity, 
on the authority of a Supreme Pastor, to whom 
all the bishops of the two hemispheres show 
obedience, as to the successor of St. Peter, as 
the Vicar of Christ; that this universal re- 
ligious society, this great family of souls, has 
children among all the races of the world; 
that its sacrifice is offered in every clime; 
that its faith is confessed in every tongue. 

This is what the Church affirms when she 
declares herself Catholic. 

Now, we can confidently assert that this 
fact is manifestly of such a nature that it 
could not be affirmed with impunity for a 
single hour, were it not notorious, striking and 
incontestible. 

This was admirably shown by the good 
sense of a poor laborer, who, when asked if 
the priest did not deceive him and the other 
parishioners by preaching to them the univers- 
ality of the Church, answered, " The priest 
would not be able to do so long." 

And it is a fact that no sect has dared to 
appropriate to itself the title of Catholic, al- 
though there would have been nothing more 
easy than to say: It is we who are Catholics, 
and that truth, moreover, evidently clings to 
this quality of Catholics. On this occasion, 
as on hundreds of others, all the calculations 



IS CLEAR TO THE SIMPLE. 1 23 

» 

of ambition or of policy have given way be- 
fore the invincible conscience ; and all inno- 
vators have seen, though obscurely, the ab- 
solute impossibility of a like usurpation. 
Like that Book of which she is the sole de- 
positary and sole lawful interpreter, the 
Catholic Church is invested with a character 
so great so striking, and so inimitable 
that no one has ever dreamt of calling in 
question her name against the voice of the 
conscience of the universe.* 

You see the Count de Maistre renders in 
the language of genius the common sense 
words of our laborer, and you see that the 
same light shines at once in the eyes of the 
ignorant and of the learned. 

But as there are minds whom this light 
wounds, because the brightness of Catholicity 
is troublesome to them, since it proves to them 
that they ought to believe, and they do not wish 
to believe, they try to obscure this brightness, 
in the name of all that detaches itself from 
this incomparable Catholicity. They go so 
far as even denying it in presence of the 
Greek schism, of the schism of imperial Russia, 
of the royal English or Prussian schism, of the 
Protestantism of the different German, Swiss, 
or American States. But how is it that they 
do not see the impotence of political, schis- 
matic, or Protestant powers to destroy or ob- 



* De Maistre. Du Pape, liv. iv., chap. v. 



t24 WHAT IS CLEAR TO THE LEARNED 

scure Catholicity even among themselves? 
The Church does not depend upon kingdoms, 
and the blind love of the confusion of these 
two powers is necessary not to see that the 
Church is full of life in Germany, in England, 
in Russia, in the United States, and every- 
where, since her children die for Jesus Christ 
in empires still subject to the power of the 
persecutor. 

Here is a fact; does anything like it exist 
on the earth ? 

Where is the Anglican Church, except 
in England and in the English colonies, sub- 
ject to the doctrinal power of the parliament 
of the most gracious queen of England? 

Where is the Muscovite Church, which calls 
herself orthodox, though no one gives her 
this title, except there, where the holy imperial 
synod holds its imperial and spiritual sway? 

Where are the Protestant churches which 
have not been organized by the state or with' 
the approbation of the state? If they wish 
to be independent of the state, do we not see 
them show their hollowness by falling into 
doubt, by becoming mere opinions, cnly 
adopting a rationalism scarcely masked by 
the Scriptures ? Have we not, moreover, seen 
and published in another place* the public 
avowal, which they themselves make of their 
im potency to agree in any one profession of 



* See the Masques-' Bib liques. 



IS CLEAR TO THE SIMPLE. I 2£ : 

faith whatever, M. Guizot desired them, it is 
true, to agree at least on the existence of God, N 
on the creation of the world, on the fall of 
man, and on the redemption by Jesus Christ, 
but this desire, which made M. Guizot draw 
near to the true religion of his fathers, sufficed 
also to have him deprived of any government 
in his Church. The Evangelical Alliance no 
longer agrees on anything at all, neither about 
the divinity of Christ, nor about the redemp- 
tion of the human race, nor about the creation 
of the world. God himself is to it a question, 
as He is to all rationalists. It cannot lay its 
hand on the Bible and say: I believe all that 
is contained in this book, for it no longer be- 
lieves in the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures.^ 
The only act of faith which its members who 
still believe in the Bible can make is: that in 
presence of the continual variations and per- 
petual divergences of our Churches in the: 
interpretation of this book, I believe that I do 
not know what it wishes me to believe. 

Catholicity or universality is only the ex- 
pansion of unity. Far, therefore, from show- 
ing a shadow of Catholicity, the diffusion of 
Protestantism is only a wide-spread division. 
It is the continual war against Catholic, 
unity, and nothing else. How is it that M. 
Guizot does not see this?* 

* When we spoke (page 9) of the powerful voices 
which were raised up in numbers, among the members 
of the Catholic Church to defend the divinity of Christ, 



126 WHAT IS CLEAR TO THE LEARNED 



But do not other religions exist besides 
Christianity which can pretend to universality ? 
And is it enough for common sense to listen 
to the voice of the Church and to look at 
what she shows with certain knowledge that 
there is no universal Church in the world ex- 
cept the Catholic Church ? What is there be- 
sides Christianity ? 

There is Paganism, Judaism, Isiamism. I 
will show just now why I do not add ration- 
alism. In the meanwhile, the Church pro- 
claims notorious, public, and striking facts, 
when she asserts that these religions are not 
Catholic, that they possess no universal doc- 
trinal power. 

against the attacks of a school or a doctrine of which 
M. Renan has made himself the champion, and spoke 
of the weakness of the rare protestations of Protestant- 
ism against this new form of Arianism, we did not 
comprise among the latter the protestation of M. Guizot 
which was made much later, for M. Guizot rarely writes 
anything that is feeble. But if there is no weakness in 
what he says, is there not weakness in being silent on 
what he is silent? He speaks of the essential dogmas 
of Christianity which he finds in the Holy Scriptures, 
but he discovers in the Scriptures neither the Church 
nor the Eucharist, that is to say, the divine and 
living constitution of Christianity itself; he makes 
no account of the Eucharist, the perpetual sacrifice of 
the new covenant, the very heart of the Christian re- 
ligion. It is with confidence that we here offer these 
pages of this little work to M. Guizot, in which we con- 
sider the divine testimony which the Scriptures render to 
these two great works of Jesus Christ, and the testimony, 
not less divine, that these works themselves render to 
the Scriptures. 



IS CLEAR TO THE SIMPLE. 127 

Far from having been, or from ever pos- 
sessing a universal doctrinal power, Paganism 
never thought of claiming this, and in no wise 
claims it at present. Nationalism has always 
been one of its characteristics. The gods of 
the nations were obliged themselves to receive 
the right of citizenship in order to be received 
by other nations. Wherever Paganism still ex- 
ists it is marked with this sign of untruthful- 
ness, truth, as we have said, admitting of no 
limits or frontiers. When have the idolaters of 
the ancient world, the Egyptians, the Assyrians, 
the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, ever 
thought of spreading the truth among other 
peoples? And when have the idolatrous wor- 
ships still existing as Brahminism and Budd- 
hism ever had the idea of sending us the 
light ? I see the army of martyrs that they 
have made, but where are the martyrs they 
have had ? 

It is manifest also that Islamism is not a 
universal doctrinal power. It is only the 
worship of a race, or of certain races. It has 
only found its way among nations of the 
same clime. It passed from Asia to the idol- 
aters of Africa, and sought the East of Eu- 
rope, only to be convinced of its impotence, for it 
died when it came in contact with Christianity. 
The very sentiment of Catholicity is wanting 
to it, as well as the doctrinal catholic power. 
It has shown in fact, zeal for conquest, but 
when has it had the heart to send out apos- 



£28 WHAT IS CLEAR TO THE LEARNED 



ties? What it has had' the heart to do is to 
stifle the voice of the apostles of the gospel, 
to put them to death in order not to witness 
the divine spectacle of thousands of Mahom- 
etans coming to Jesus Christ at the voice of a 
Saint Vincent Ferrer. They have had the 
heart to pierce the lips of a Saint Raymond, 
and close them with an iron link, in order to 
choke his voice; to reject with fear the propo- 
sition of a S.aint Francis of Assisi, who offered 
the famous Sultan Meledin to cast himself 
into the fire with the ministers of the Koran 
in order to prove to the Mahometans the di- 
vinity of his master. 

Judaism is still less careless than Mahomet- 
ism about the general propagation of its faith. 
It has no longer the spirit of proselytism of 
Moses. The Mosaic religion belongs to the 
unity of revelation, as we have seen, but Ju- 
daism has broken the chain of this unity when 
it refused to acknowledge the accomplish- 
ment of the promises made to its fathers. It 
is only a mummy of Mosaism. It preserves 
itself, but only in its tomb. 

No, nowhere outside of the Church do we 
see even the shadow of a universal doctrinal 
power, and the facts which prove this are so 
clearly of the order of those which do not re- 
quire proof, that the Church has only to speak 
of them in order to prove to the most igno- 
rant man that to her alone belongs the in- 
comparable character which, distinguishes her. 



IS CLEAR TO THE SIMPLE. I?9 

But is the fact which constitutes this char- 
acter as visibly divine as it is visibly existing ? 
And was Bossuet right to say of this fact of 
Catholicity of time and space, of this fact of 
Catholic unity which embraces all ages and 
peoples: Besides the advantage the Church of 
Jesus Christ has in being alone founded on mir- 
aculous and divine facts which have been 
fully detailed, without the fear of a denial, at 
the very time they took place, there is for the 
benefit of those who did not live in those 
times a miracle always existing, which con- 
firms the truth of all others." 

You will ask me here, where is this miracle, 
where is this manifestly preternatural, super- 
natural and divine work ?* 

Hive we not already challenged your 
reason, to fail to see it, in the unity which is 
mistress of all ages ? 

And you ask me now, where is the manifestly 
divine work in the whole of Catholicity, in 
the doctrinal unity mistress of all ages and 
places ? 

This very question proves to what point 
the works of God, when permanent, cease to 
strike our inattentive, distracted, and troubled 
minds, which are blinded by the senses. You 
ask me where is the miracle here, the work 
marked with the visible seal of divinity ? But 

*. It is in this sense .that Bossuet here employs the 
word miracle, and not in the rigorous sense of the 
Y\tor,d, which means a passing, exceptional, divine work. 



130 WHAT IS CLEAR TO THE LEARNED 

answer me yourselves: Have you not seen 
nationalism, and often something far more re- 
strained, still characterize all the sects ? Do 
you not see that the most powerful of the false 
worships have never been more than the 
religion of races ? Do you not know that the 
greatest philosophers have only produced 
schools, and that these schools have rarely 
formed two disciples who agreed with each 
other? And it is in presence of these con- 
tinual and ever-powerless efforts of the human 
mind to produce religious unity in the in- 
telligence — it is in presence of the impotence 
of man to bring forth aught else but division, 
that shines forth a doctrinal authority mani- 
festly Catholic in all times, manifestly Catholic 
in all places, announcing and causing the 
same faith to be confessed by the ignorant as 
well as by the learned of all ages and of all 
nations; and you do not see here the finger of 
God? 

You will seek perhaps to justify your re- 
sistance to this light by a last comparison, 
and you will say: " I grant that the doctrinal 
authority of the Church is alone Catholic 
or universal, but by the side of the authority 
of the Catholic Faith, there is the authority 
of rationalism, there is the universal or Catho- 
lic incredulity also, since infidels exist every- 
where." 

Vain comparison! A doctrinal authority 
must teach a doctrine, and if rationalism knows 



IS CLEAR TO THE SIMPLE. 131 



how to doubt and to deny, it has nothing to 
affirm as its own. Far from having a religious 
doctrine, it has not even found its God 

The end of authority is to produce unity, 
and rationalism has never produced the shadow 
of any kind of religious unity. Every free 
thinker adheres provisionally to his opinions, 
until they are worn out, but where is the 
rationalist who has ever succeeded in uniting 
in a stable manner, two minds in the same 
opinion about God, the world, and man in his 
origin, end and course ? 

.Rationalism knows so well its weakness here, 
that in despair it has gone as far as protesting 
against every form of symbol, that is to say, 
against all certain truth. Truth, it says, is 
essentially progressive, which means to say in 
its language always changing. This is 
formally to assert, though in deceitful words, 
that there is no truth, since as it is always to 
come, it can never actually exist. What is, 
therefore, this progress of truth ? The pro- 
gress is nothing. Rationalism clearly hates 
the light; Odit lucent. 

But if the most powerful of errors confesses 
its impotence to submit intelligence to one and 
the same truth, how, once again, can you ex- 
plain without God, the submission to the same 
faith of a multitude of powerful and well- 
educated minds, among all nations and ages ? 
Rationalist, you cling to your own thoughts, 
you will tell me, but what does this prove ? 



132 WHAT IS CLEAR TO THE LEARNED 



Stronger minds than yours have clung to 
their thoughts also, but these were not the 
less found vain. " Evanuerunt cum sonitu"* 
But if your adhesion to your own thoughts 
proves nothing, behold an adhesion which 
proves something; behold the chain of great 
men adhering firmly to the same idea, re- 
vealed by a word not their own, but which 
has ravished them; see St. Paul bowed down 
before it, because it does not come from him: 
" The gospel which was preached by me, is 
not according to man, for neither did I receive 
it of man, nor did I learn it; but by the revela- 
tion of Jesus Christ." — (Gal. i. it.) 

Look at Denis the Areopagite, conquered 
in his turn by this word which had conquered 
the Apostle; consider the philosophy of 
Greece which at last acknowledged its mas- 
ter; behold Justin of Rome, Ignatius of 
Antioch, Cyprian of Carthage, Hilary of 
Poitiers, Ambrose of Milan, Augustine of 
Hippo, Chrysostom of Constantinople, Jerome 
in the desert, the two Gregories of Nazianzen 
and of Rome, Lactantius, Boitius, Vincent of 
Lerins, Cassidorus, Alcuin, Anselm, Bernard, 
Thomas of Aquin, Dante, Bacon, Gerson, 
Suarez, Pascal, Descartes, Leibnitz, Bossuet, 
de Maistre, the great minds of all nations, 
enlightened, submissive to, and elevated to 
the furnace of light where their genius found 



"They vanished with a noise." 



IS CLEAR TO THE SIMPLE. 



1 33 



its flame, and it is in presence of this spectacle 
unique in the history of the human mind, that 
you ask, where is the miracle ? But it is our 
turn to ask you what right you have to deny 
the work of God in all this. As for ourselves, 
we deny you this right, because reaso?i obliges, 
and because it shows us clearly in the marvel- 
lous fact of Catholic unity, the work of Him, 
who alone has the power of submitting all in- 
telligences to the same light; u Bringing into 
captivity every understanding unto the obedi- 
ence of Christ." — (II Cor. x. 5.) '* For obedi- 
ence ta the faith of all nations for his name." 
—(Rom. i. 5.) 

Incredulity is very natural, very human, 
since it is the spontaneous fruit of pride and 
of the passions, of religious ignorance or of 
self-sufficiency. But that the greatest minds 
of all ages and of all places should agree in 
submitting to the same faith, and that in spite 
of the varieties of times and of men, again I 
say, this fact is not merely human. If the 
faith modified itself according to the ideas of 
the world, if it accommodated itself to times or 
circumstances, always bent but never broken, 
then one could still understand that it could, 
by mere human means, prolong its empire. 
But every one knows that the Catholic faith 
does not change, and that indefectibility is as 
clearly one of its characters as perpetuity and 
universality. This very indefectibility, with 
which the makers of new religions have at all 



134 WHAT IS CLEAR TO THE LEARNED 

times reproached the Church, ever young be- 
cause she is immortal, causes it to see these relig- 
ions arise, grow old and die. As yet this inde- 
fectible faith, far from suffering from the pro- 
gress of ages and of sciences, finds in them 
ever new subjects of triumph. What dogma 
has suffered from discoveries, whether physical, 
astronomical, geological, archeological, or 
ethnographical? None. If you doubt this, ask 
a Descartes, a Kepler, a Copernicus, a Galileo, 
a Cuvier, a Deluc, a Champollion. Far from 
growing pale in the presence of the torch of 
science, the faith which is mixed up with 
everything, finds everywhere magnificent and 
unexpected confirmations. Is this human ? 
Does not this fact of the indefectibility of the 
faith, always in harmony with the new lights of 
science, reveal at one and the same time, 
Him who is the God of faith as well as the 
God of science ? " The Lord is a God of all 
knowledge, and to him are thoughts prepared." 
(I. Kings ii. 3.) What is evident regarding the 
unity of faith in all places and times, and re- 
garding its unity in itself, or its indefectibility, 
is equally evident regarding the social unity 
which is inherent to it, and which sustains it. 
The unity of Catholic society is manifestly 
supernatural. Is it not with great difficulty 
that the masters of the most powerful 
kingdoms, supported by legions of warriors, 
maintain their authority, that is to say, the 
national unity of one state ? And here we have 



IS CLEAR TO THE SIMPLE. 



i3S 



a power universally disarmed making itself 
universally obeyed by a powerful hierarchy 
organized among all nations, and consisting 
of all nations, preserving by its word only 
the unity of a society of two hundred millions 
of men in the two hemispheres, the only society 
that has existed for twenty centuries, amidst 
the successive ruins of all others; and in 
presence of such a fact, one has the blind 
folly to seek for the causes of it on earth. 

Rationalism, however, is not so blind as it 
seems to be. For whence does it happen that, 
kind, tolerant, and well-disposed towards all 
the sects, and even towards worships that are 
not Christian, it cannot dissimulate the aver- 
sion with which it is filled against Catholic unity 
alone. And this aversion is constantly shown 
by its words and acts, by a constant odious 
and systematic silence of all the glorious deeds 
of the faith. Whence comes this deep-rooted 
aversion? How is it possible to hate the 
Mother of so many great men, of so many great 
works, of so many heroic virtues, the Church of 
the Martyrs, of the Fathers, of the Doctors, of 
Virgins devoted by legions to the most sub- 
lime sacrifices of charity, the Church which has 
made the world Christian, the Church which in 
its inexhaustible force has always blood to shed 
for the salvation of men, and which sheds it 
actually in our times in the extreme East 
as she did in the first days of her Apostolate? 
Once again, I ask why does rationalism not 



136 WHAT IS CLEAR TO THE LEARNED 



only hate, but keep all its hatred for this 
Mother of souls and of nations? The reason 
is, that outside of the Church it only sees 
man everywhere, the work of man, and hence 
its own work, but in the Church it encounters 
the superhuman, perceives God, feels a su- 
perior power that man cannot bend, even if 
he held in his hand all the sceptres of kings 
and all the passions of men. It is this that 
makes rationalism revolt, because the appari- 
tion of God troubles it, and it does not wish 
for a sovereign Master, for him who com- 
mands and judges. Thus it is that the same 
light which attracts some irritates others, and 
thus gives a two-fold proof of its divinity. 

But it remains for us to show once more 
with what ease the man who is the least in- 
structed acknowledges God in the splendor 
of his work. 

The true sage of Geneva, St. Francis of 
Sales, shows in one of the greatest of his 
works, in his " Treatise on the love of God," 
how promptly the human mind recognizes the 
true, living, and only God, when revelation 
manifests Him. This is so because the hu- 
man mind is itself created to the image of 
God, by its nature has an inclination for its 
Father, and hence it suffices to show Him to 
the mind for the latter to feel drawn towards 
Him, as the loadstone is drawn to the magnet. 
This is so true that the minds of children them- 
selves seize nothing more quickly or more keen- 



IS CLEAR TO THE SIMPLE. 



137 



ly than the idea of God, and nothing is 
more easy to a mother than to further grace, 
and to cause the adoration and prayer of a 
child to mount to heaven. 

Now, just as it is easy .or the mind to ac- 
knowledge the one true God, so is it easy to 
it to recognize the divine character of. His 
works. 

Ask the ignorant man as well as the learned, 
what our mother the Church requires from 
all of us; if the true religion can change with 
the opinions of men, if it ought not to be im- 
mutable, the same to-day as yesterday, the 
same to-morrow as to-day, the same in the 
past, present and future. Do you not know 
beforehand what answer you will receive ? 
Simple common sense, therefore, knows when 
its attention is roused, that unity of time, or 
perpetuity, is one of the characters of true 
religion. 

Ask the uneducated man if the divine truth 
can accommodate itself to the ideas of na- 
tions, if one can believe in one way in Paris, 
in another way in London, Rome and Jerusa- 
lem ? And you will see that he knows that if 
the truth is not universally received, that if it 
is rejected by the malice of man, nevertheless 
that it cannot bend to the caprices of men and 
nations, but that it must be everywhere the 
same, one in extension as in time, universal 
by its nature as it is perpetual. You will see 
that he will understand, in his own fashion, 



138 WHAT IS CLEAR TO THE LEARNED 



that truth cannot have limits, and that the 
defenders of purely national religions are 
politicians without conscience.* 

Ask the uneducated man again if the di- 
vine teaching authority can alter the truth 
which God has confided to its care, and if it 
is possible that God, having established it to 
teach us, will ever permit that it lead us into 
error? You will see clearly by his answer 
that he understands that a divinely instituted 
authority must be divinely sustained and as- 
sisted, and hence divinely faithful in keeping 
the deposit that is confided to it.* 

It is true, therefore, that every reasonable 
mind, although completely deprived of in- 

* Paganism made religion depend on the State. It 
confounded the priesthood and the empire, and knew 
nothing of the destruction of these two powers. Does 
not the affectation savor of Paganism, that makes the 
sects, and especially the Masonic sect, give to the centre 
of Catholicity the title of a foreign power? 

* Divinely faithful, or infallible guardian. This is 
infallibility, the scarecrow of the doctors of shallow 
science. Ask them what it is, and you will see that 
they do not know. As usual they despise what they 
are ignorant of. The only object of the infallibility of 
the Church is to preserve the revealed truth; infallibility 
does not create truth, but preserves it. It is therefore 
the fidelity divinely promised to the teaching authority 
divinely established to preserve the deposit of revela- 
tion. When God said Docete, '* teach," He could not 
fail to say also Vobiscum sum, " I am with you." In- 
fallibility, therefore, is the grace of state necessary to 
the religious authority, gratis data propter nostram 
salutem, 44 freely given for our salvation." 



IS CLEAR TO THE SIMPLE. 



139 



struction, recognizes without difficulty, with- 
out labor, as by a divine instinct of the truth, 
provided its attention be drawn to the fact, 
that the true religion, or the true divine teach- 
ing authority, ought to have the great charac* 
ter of God Himself, unity; unity of time or 
perpetuity, unity of place or universality, unity 
in its teaching, that is to say, in the doctrine 
which it perpetuates, or in other words, inde- 
fectibility. 

But what is the authority, speaking with 
power, and marked with the great sign of 
unity in doctrine, in place, and in time. Has 
not this triple unity a common name by which 
she is known by the entire world ? Is it not 
called Catholic unity or Catholicity ? now, it 
is this triple unity, or this character really 
Catholic, remember it well, that the Church 
shoivs us herself i?i herself, and which thus 
causes to be comprehended at the same time 
by the uneducated as well as by the learned, 
as possessing a threefold certainty and a three- 
fold divinity. 

It is therefore true that it suffices for good 
common sense, to find itself in presence of 
the Church, that it is sufficient for the mind 
to hear it, and see it, to listen to what the 
Church teaches it, and to regard what the 
Church shows it, to relish the full truth of 
these words of St. Augustine: The name of 
Catholic which the Church bears, this name 
alone says all that is necessary to keep me 



140 WHAT IS CLEAR TO THE LEARNED 



in her fold. "Tenet me in Ecclesicc gremio 
ipsum Catholic m nomen" And why does this 
name say all that is necessary, why is nothing 
more required to make every one comprehend 
the decisive analysis of the faith ?* Because 
the name Catholic is manifestly the name 
peculiar to divine truth on earth, and because 
this name is manifestly well deserved. Yes, 
manifestly, for it expresses a fact so constant, 
so living, so undeniable, that no one will think 
of disputing it with the Church against the con- 
scie7ice of the universe. 

To blush at this word it is necessary to 
have more than weakness of heart, it is nec- 
essary to have weakness of mind, or in other 
words to be an imbecile, and yet people are 
found to do this, especially at those epochs of 
pride and abasement of proud ignorance and 
ingratitude, in which the world, civilized by 
Christianity, attributes to itself the principle 
of its civilization, and tries to cut the roots of 

* To analyze the act of faith, is to reduce it to the 
principles which concur to produce it. These princi- 
ples themselves can be reduced to two; to the principle 
or motive of faith, and to the principle or motive of 
credibility. The motive of credibility is the reason or 
fact which makes us see that God has spoken, and that 
we must believe his word. The motive of faith is the 
infinite veracity of God Himself. We give expression 
to both these principles, when we say; I believe all 
that the Holy Church proposes to my belief, because 
God has revealed it to her. I only believe the testimony 
of God, but the Church makes me see by facts her di- 
vine teaching mission. 



IS CLEAR TO THE SIMPLE. 



141 



the tree whose fruits have nourished it; "the 
beloved grew fat and kicked." — (Deut. 
xxxii. 15.) 

It is then that even the name of God dis- 
appears from laws and institutions, and that 
kings and ruling assemblies seem not to dare 
pronounce his name. 

Are they afraid ? Do they fear the thought 
of the judge of their works ? We must think 
so, because kings are but men, and parlia- 
ments only assemblages of men, and man only 
fears the light when he does evil. — (St. John iii.) 

On the contrary, whoever seeks to know 
the truth in order to accomplish it, recognizes 
it without difficulty, not only by the exterior 
and all divine brightness of its unity, threefold, 
supernatural, but by its interior and doctrinal 
lustre. 

"If any man will do the will of him: he 
shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of 
God or whether I speak of myself." — (St. 
John vii. 17.) 

This St. Vincent of Paul knew by expe- 
rience, when he wrote to his missionaries who 
were preaching to the infidels, bidding them 
to be full of confidence, because the good news 
of which they were the bearers, the Gospel 
which they were announcing, was but the di- 
vine answer to thegroanings of human nature. 
Yes, there is at the bottom of our nature, such 
as it undeniably exists in all men, yearnings 
and questions, to which Jesus Christ, ever 



142 CLEAR TO THE LEARNED AND SIMPLE. 

living in his Church, can alone answer, there 
is at the bottom of our nature an evil of which 
He alone tells us the origin, and to which He 
-alone supplies the remedy; and the voice of 
Christ, who is ever living in the Church, 
answers to these yearnings and questions, 
points out the evil and the remedy with a 
power which proves its own origin, not only 
by the triple divine character with which w r e 
have seen it invested, exteriorly, but also by 
the action as sensibly divine, which it exer- 
cises within us, when it pronounces those 
words which God alone could speak: Taste 
and see; " Gustate etvidite" — (Ps. xxxiii.) 

But I will not develop here this new and 
inward proof of the truth of Christianity. I 
only wished to defy your reason not to see 
this truth with evidence. I have kept my 
word, and this is sufficient 

I will only exhort you to seek this inward 
and penetrating proof of the truth, where you 
will find it treated at length, for this proof 
wall make the conviction of your mind go to 
your heart and even to the very bottom of 
your soul.* 

* See " Le Christ et les antichrists," 3d part, Jesus 
Christ dans la conscience. Also " La Question Re- 
ligieuse," C. ix. C. xii. C. xvi. 



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